ROMANCE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Trimark Pictures Director: Catherine Breillat Writer: Catherine Breillat Cast: Caroline Trousselard, Sagamore Stevenin, Francois Berland, Rocco Siffredi, Reza Habouhossein, Fabien de Jomaron, Emma Colberti, Ashley Wanninger SCREENED AT THE BAM ROSE CINEMAS, 30 LAFAYETTE AVE. BROOKLYN NY 11217 (718) 623-2770.
I'd like a dollar for every time I've heard a woman defensively say, "I'm not a feminist, but..." or a couple of bucks for every man who intones, "I'm all for equal pay for equal work, but..." Look around. It's hard to find people who will come right and say that they're militant feminists. What is feminism anyway? To try to pigeonhole the theory is like trying to define "democrat," or "freedom," or "liberal" or "conservative." There's a broad range embraced by each of these terms and perhaps no two conservatives and no two liberals are exactly alike in their political convictions. Nor are any two feminists.
With the startling, innovative movie "Romance," professed feminist Catharine Breillat has given us a film quite a bit more mature and developed than her innocuous "36 Fillette" eleven years ago (about a 14-year-old who may or not give up her virginity while on vacation with her parents). One could almost say that each time someone in the audience walks out on it, the more effective the movie is. Breillat's own take on feminism is not so much the opposite of the views professed by Andrew Dworkin in her book "Intercourse" as its converse. While Dworkin suggests that the sexual act is yet another weapon of the male in his history of subjugating women, Breillat is determined to show that women become vanquished only when they put up with men who do NOT give them what they want and need in the erotic arena. Only when a woman frees herself from dependence on timid, restrained, traditional--in a word uncaring--men to satisfy them can she find her sexual identity and become transfigured.
Whether the graphic portrayals of sexual organs in various modes is essential to bringing out the film-maker's point or whether the explicit displays or genitalia infuse the movie primarily to increase profits is anybody's guess. Breillat might insist that scenes skirting the borders of hard-core porn are indispensable to her view that the heroine's discovery of sexuality must be confronted head-on. Breillat's opening scene of Marie (Caroline Ducey) in the virginal-white bedroom of her lover Paul (Sagamore Stevenin), vividly conveys to us the extent of her frustration. Paul, a vain male model with no small amount of hostility toward his long-term girl friend, announces that he has lost his sexual desire for her and refuses to give himself over to her sexual embrace. Marie-- who will ultimately show the fury of Lorca's Yerma and the wrath of Euripides' Medea--clings to Paul out of what she considers her overreaching love for him, but one day determines to experience sex in all of its sacred and profane ramifications. After a brief affair with the Italian Paolo (Rocco Siffredi) in a bar and later with a bum on an apartment stairwell, she becomes meaningfully involved with Robert (Francois Berleand), the principal of a school in which she teaches second grade. Robert, who considers himself an unattractive person of little wealth (despite his spacious apartment and Jacuzzi), explains matter-of-factly that he's had 10,000 women. In his monologue he becomes the film- makers mouthpiece, venturing subversive ideas: that women are not at all afraid of the obscene, and that they would easily yield to a stranger's advances while playing hard-to-get with men who love them.
"Romance," which appears to bear an ironic title considering its detachment, nonetheless may embrace Ms. Breillat's view that sex IS romance, not the chocolate and flowers so conventionally associated with the feeling. The most verbally amusing scene occurs in Marie's classroom in which the teacher metaphorically expresses her sexual views to an obviously uncomprehending group of lovely 7-year-olds. Exhibiting less interest in conjugating verbs than in a more physical type of conjugation, she announces in the lesson on the term "to have" and on the copulative verb "to be" that "you can be without having; you can have without being." Nor do I recall any other movie that so lovingly and patiently shows an aroused woman being tied, handcuffed and gagged by her man, the two becoming excited to a fever pitch without a dollop of conventional sex.
The image that sticks most to the mind is of a dream sequence. Marie envisions a scene in which women are lying across bladeless guillotines, their upper bodies separated from their lowers. Kind men cater to the former areas, while the luckier guys on the other end engage them in raw sex. A woman needs both. Breillat appears to believe that gentle, considerable men are a two francs a dozen. What women really lack are the other kind, and her movie will probably inspire even more post-viewing discussion about its ideas than about the quality of its story-telling.
Not Rated. Running Time: 93 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews