The weird thing is, though, what would be likely to shock audiences in Romance is what happens amongst all the clinical copulation. In one sequence, the film's lead character, Marie (played by Caroline Ducey), sneaks out of the bedroom of her model-boyfriend Paul (Sagamore Stevenin). She picks up a man in a cafe, makes out with him in her car until morning, makes a date to meet later for sex--and then drives straight to her job as a grammar school teacher.

Romance is not necessarily about the distance between our sex lives and our "normal" lives, but it's not not about that either. The film is a sometimes harsh, sometimes arousing (in more ways than one) look at one woman's sexual dysfunction, and by extension--Breillat would likely assert--all women's.

Saddled with a sexy boyfriend who won't sleep with her, Marie endeavors on a series of increasingly degrading affairs. With the stranger from the cafe, Marie attempts to see if she can make sex disgusting to a man by constantly referring to human hair, blood, and semen. She fails to turn him off. Later, Marie allows herself to be stripped and tied up by her boss, then proceeds to sell herself to a man on the street, who essentially rapes her without paying her. Marie is undeterred. She defiantly shouts after him, "I'm not ashamed!"

Ultimately, Marie gets pregnant and allows herself to be a case study for gynecology students. They stand in line with their plastic gloves, awaiting a turn at the exam table. The story, and all lingering eroticism, ends with a nothing-taboo depiction of live birth.

Because this is a French film, the scenes of graphic sexuality are interspersed with static shots of quiet contemplation, shattered by voice-overs in which Marie ruminates about her dissatisfaction with life. Were the conversation about, say, actuarial tables, Romance would be pretty hard to take. But because it's about sex, the abundance of silence and stillness holds a fascination. And much of what Breillat has to say, via the (very) brave young actress Ducey and their mutual character Marie, is boldly intriguing.

A few moments stand out. Marie holds a mirror to her vagina and her face, and wonders if men are able to make a connection between the two, to love them both equally. Similarly, Marie's boss jokes that most men couldn't identify their own penis if they had to pick through a basketful to find it. The two insights are brought together in a fantasy sequence: Marie imagines a brothel where women are presented to men from the waist down, only to be ravaged truly anonymously.

All of this has to do with the three-way disconnection between human intellect, emotion, and desire. But if Romance comes off more as an admirable, hard-to-like "think piece" than a gut-wrenching emotional powerhouse, blame Breillat's own disconnection. The writer-director never articulates fully whether her film is an essay on sexuality or a narrow character study. The main problem is that Breillat never explains Marie's boyfriend's sudden disinterest in sex, which makes what follows all the harder to understand.