Directed by Catherine Breillat. There have been many French and Italian art films with explicit sex the last few years, and this is the most acclaimed of the bunch.Caroline Ducey plays a sad wisp of a woman trapped in a loveless relationship with a man whose coldness to her is unbearably cruel to watch. She seeks out increasingly daring and perverse sexual outlets and ruminates on her nature, voicing many sincere female views about sex and self image that are common, but seldom spoken. Some are profound and sympathetic, while others are self-serving or pathological, but all have verisimilitude. (If I do nothing else on this site, I want to argue forcefully that art is what remains when propaganda is stripped away. Breillat's greatest asset is her lack of a soapbox, and one shouldn't assume that Ducey is to be viewed as wise or good simply because she's the female protagonist in a film made by a woman.)
The cast and crew on this picture were real snobs - they were incensed when Breillat brought in porn actor Sifferedi, and made his part of the shoot a living hell. Ducey finally snapped and refused to keep having sex with him, and is bitter about the film. I would prefer he wasn't in it, but only because he is so recognizable. Aside from that he is perfectly adequate in his minor role as a one-dimensionally virile man.
Best to watch this in French with English subtitles, because the English dubbed dialogue is inferior.
Starring Caroline Ducey, Sagamore Stévenin, François Berléand and prolific XXX actor Rocco Siffredi. Run Time: 98 minutes. Region 1 encoding
