The very sexual scenes that make up the bulk of Romance's running time are more explicit by far than anything to come from mainstream world cinema since Japanese director Nagisa Oshima unleashed his In the Realm of the Senses on the world back in 1976. Romance isn't quite as hardcore as all that, but it is significantly more explicit than the more recent Italian sexual cause celebre, Devil in the Flesh (1987) -- which notoriously featured a brief, dark scene where Maruchka Detmers gave Federico Pitzalis a half-hearted blow job on camera.

Now that the obligatory historical comparisons are out of the way, I want to be clear that there's more going on in Romance than just the erotic touching, erect penises and gynecological camera angles. Each of the sexual encounters depicted takes the main character a step farther on an internal journey toward some kind of self-knowledge -- that's why it's important that these scenes be shown, and not simply hinted at modestly. (Trimark will release the film in the U.S., unedited and unrated, in September.) Breillat's fearless accomplice in this exploration is the remarkable Caroline Ducey, a naturalistic young actress who projects conviction, confusion and vulnerability as Marie, the film's schoolteacher protagonist.

Marie embarks on her journey after much frustration with fashion-model boyfriend Paul (Sagamore Stévenin), who is either unable or unwilling to make love to her. She first finds succor in the bed of Paolo (real-life porn magnate Rocco Siffredi), a beefy fellow whom she picks up at a Parisian cafe in the middle of the night. Before long she politely ditches Paolo, unnerved that he is taking the place of Paul in her thoughts. Her explorations next lead her to a series of quietly intense sado-masochistic encounters with her school's headmaster (Francois Berleand), an inveterate chauvinist skilled in the use of ropes, handcuffs, and other assorted bondage equipment. Every night, she returns home to an uninterested Paul, blithely remarking on her evening out with the girls. In this way, at least, she remains scrupulously faithful.

The film's centerpiece is an uncomfortably long sequence that has Berleand stripping Marie and then roping, buckling, and chaining her into uncomfortable positions. (Afterward, they go out for a nice dinner.) The strength of the scene is that Breillat doesn't clue us in to how Marie feels about this particular experiment. At any rate, it's out of her hands once the gag goes in her mouth and the cuffs on her wrists. As in earlier passages from the film, we have to content ourselves with watching, imagining the reality of such an act as it passes in real time on the screen. No matter how vigorous our objections to this scenario may be -- or, conversely, how strongly we may be aroused by the notion -- Breillat's point of view remains, I think, absolutely non-judgmental.

That's not to say that the film lacks judgment, or a point of view. Marie's adventurousness eventually, perhaps unavoidably, leads her to be badly mistreated, her spirit finally broken. Despite her incongruous protestations that she's unashamed, this abjection seems finally to change something inside of her, and her mood spirals downward. Licking her wounds, Marie finally draws some conclusions about what it means to make love to a woman -- and why her beloved Paul remains bluntly uninterested in servicing her.

The film's conclusion offers glibly humorous relief from everything that has come before, a sly nod to female angst and instinct, as well as to cosmic balance. Even though Marie makes a decisive exit from her loveless love life, her motivations in screwing strangers and acquaintances remain vaguely enigmatic -- as many sexual impulses must, even in the real world.

As Breillat took the stage after a screening of Romance at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City, one audience member wanted to know if Marie was a "nymphomaniac," as Marie herself wonders in voiceover at one point during the movie. And if Marie wasn't a nymphomaniac, this woman asked, what was she? Another viewer wanted to know why Marie stops seeing Paolo, the "only real man" in the entire movie, after spending just a couple of nights with him. There is no easy answer to these questions; the only answers that can exist are within the film itself. Explaining a French character study is a little bit like examining a joke or dissecting a frog -- you can do it, provided you're willing to see the character, the joke, or the frog die in the process.

So I'll refrain from doing much more explaining, observing only that Romance can be read as a perhaps overly scornful look at the expected relationships between men and women. Missing the point entirely, one last questioner took po-faced issue with Breillat's choice of title, as though the director lacked any sense of irony. "Your film insults romance," he claimed. No, Breillat responded. "Romance insults itself."