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Romance
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 10 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by: Catherine Breillat
Directed by: Catherine Breillat
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 17, 1999
DVD: February 8, 2000
Running Time: 99 minutes, Color
Origin: France
Language(s): French (with English subtitles)
Summary
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: A Real Young Girl Anatomy of Hell Fat Girl Sex is Comedy
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Despite many flaws...Romance is unquestionably an important film.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
No other mainstream movie has so openly tackled the subject of female sexual experience.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
There's never been a movie director like Catherine Breillat, a fearless visionary and one hell of a woman.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A singularly cheerless trip, explicit but sterile, racy but dull.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The eroticism is powerful, and the documentary candor and directness of the sex scenes make this well worth seeing.
Read Full Review >Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson
Showing the sex seems to be the film's raison d'etre, which gets you only so far.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
A cheerless exercise.
San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
It's like watching a bad update of an Antonioni film.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris
An au natural (read: graphic) tryst-a-thon whose fashion sense is outweighed only by its bulky sexual intellectualism.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Janet Maslin
Hovers between passion and philosophical argument without fully achieving its ambition to fuse the two.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
More cautionary than titillating...some of it (is) deliberately disturbing.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Visually stunning and breathtakingly frank, but thrill-seekers beware.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Sex may, indeed, be all in the mind, but Romance fails to score in the mind's eye.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 3.9 (out of 10) based on 10 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.
