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Romance
Trimark Pictures


4.2

based on 26 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 9 votes
Read user comments
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: Not rated

Starring Caroline Trousselard, Sagamore Stevenin, Francois Berleand, and Rocco Siffredi

A provocative portrait of a young French woman, Marie (Trousselard), and her journey to gain control of her life. Marie embarks on an escalating sexual journey that tests her own physical and emotional limits, and which, through an ironic twist-of-fate, eventually leads to her fulfillment. (Trimark Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Catherine Breillat
DIRECTED BY:	Catherine Breillat
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 8, 2000 Video: February 8, 2000 Theatrical: September 17, 1999
RUNNING TIME:	99 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	France
LANGUAGE(S):	French (with English subtitles)

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Film.com Ernest Hardy

One of the best films of this year...unlike anything you've seen on the big screen.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

A dark and unsparing study of female masochism and a brittle sex comedy of manners, Romance is unsettled in tone, to say the least.

Salon.com Ray Sawhill

A landmark -- the first movie to give a convincing, feature-length account of sex from a woman's point of view.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

I did not really enjoy this movie, and yet I recommend it. Why? Because I think it's on to something interesting. Here is a movie about a woman who never stops thinking. That may not be as good for you as it is for her.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Despite many flaws...Romance is unquestionably an important film.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

No other mainstream movie has so openly tackled the subject of female sexual experience.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

There's never been a movie director like Catherine Breillat, a fearless visionary and one hell of a woman.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie is a footnote as well, a minor reference back to the days when people yearned for a cinema that was serious and erotic at the same time.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A singularly cheerless trip, explicit but sterile, racy but dull.

Newsweek David Ansen

For those who believe that movies are a proper place to explore the riddle of sex, no holds barred, this movie is de rigueur.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The eroticism is powerful, and the documentary candor and directness of the sex scenes make this well worth seeing.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Showing the sex seems to be the film's raison d'etre, which gets you only so far.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Lots of sex, but little joy.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A cheerless exercise.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

It's like watching a bad update of an Antonioni film.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

An au natural (read: graphic) tryst-a-thon whose fashion sense is outweighed only by its bulky sexual intellectualism.

The New York Times Janet Maslin

Hovers between passion and philosophical argument without fully achieving its ambition to fuse the two.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

More cautionary than titillating...some of it (is) deliberately disturbing.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Visually stunning and breathtakingly frank, but thrill-seekers beware.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

The fact that Romance was written and directed by a woman doesn't make the film any better; it simply makes it objectionable on other grounds.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Sex may, indeed, be all in the mind, but Romance fails to score in the mind's eye.

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

Catherine Breillat's pretentious, meandering, self-indulgent portrait of a libidinously deprived young woman is nothing more than pornography tricked out as feminist parable.

Film.com John Hartl

Exists in some kind of limbo, between hard-core porn and European art film, and it's not likely to satisfy fans of either.

Time Richard Corliss

It's mostly an ordeal--for actress and audience.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

As pretentious as it is hard-core specific, this fiercely anti-erotic film makes even the chilly "Eyes Wide Shut" play like "The Big Easy."

TNT RoughCut Christopher Brandon

The film so strongly fixates on strange, explicit sexual acts that it forgoes any emotional (i.e. romantic) aspects of sex.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.2 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

L. R. gave it a2:
Erotic: No. Mysterious: No. Interesting: No. This is a film about a truly f...ed up woman and her need to be needed in the most superficial of ways. It should be shown at the French Psychiatric Film Critics annual meeting in Cannes.

Liz R. gave it a 2:
Pretentious and boring. Flat characterization & absurd narration which is cliched and often makes no sense at all. A retrograde step for women and women directors.

Andrew M. gave it a 1:
I didn't like this film. Whatever it tried to achieve it failed. No message, no feeling, no reaction. And the more explicit scenes did little more than raise me from my slumber.

Daniel S. gave it an 8:
If the average person sees the title "Romance" they obviously think the movie is going to be a nice, warm fuzzy movie, good for the family. What they don't realize is that in the beggining of the movie there's a giant red X over the title "Romance" meaning, there's NO romance! This is a smart and very deep film, more than anyone would except while seeing it, leaving the viewer with a certain uncertainty afterwards.

Richard gave it a 6:
The French talk too much. Marie might have solved her problems quicker if she stopped analyzing every little move and left the dumb schmuck. That said, the film is luridly fascinating, certainly for the more pornographic aspects, and even amid the endless analysis there are a couple of bulls-eyes that make you think critically about sex and relationships. Caroline Trousselard's performance is brave and raw, and I hope she did a couple of comedies afterwards.

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Romance Trimark Pictures

Romance
Trimark Pictures