7. Romance (1999)
Marie and Paul are a couple who love each other and sleep in the same bed. Paul, to Marie's dismay, does not want to get intimate. A sexually frustrated Marie goes on a sort of sexual odyssey - having graphic sex with a lot of people. Some would point to Romance as the instigator of all of the explicit French dramas that came out in the 2000s. Director Catherine Breillat is known for pushing censorship boundaries and her generally provocative films such as A ma soeur! This time she is holding court in Romance about female sexual liberation as Marie sleeps about, indulges in a bit of BDSM and has a baby. Nothing in the film is emotionally engaging about Marie and her sex life. The film is very talky with added self narration which increases the boredom factor. The sex scenes are poorly staged and Marie looks uncomfortable in most of them. It doesn't help that she is the spitting image of Celine Dion. The whole thing can be summed up as 'French woman blabs about her boring love life and shags a lot'. It is just a supremely self important piece of smut which I wouldn't recommend to anyone on any level.