Romance, directed by Catherine Breillat (36 Fillette), was controversial in its native France due to its several unmistakably real sex scenes. But its ability to shock ends there. In a performance that can only be called brave—and wasted—Caroline Ducey plays a young woman whose growing dissatisfaction with her sexless relationship spurs her to seek pleasure elsewhere. Quicker than you can say Belle De Jour, her quest turns into a campaign of self-degradation, complete with the sort of navel-gazing narration that would have Buñuel rolling over in his grave. As Ducey bounces from the handsome stud to the bondage enthusiast to the rapist, virtually no taboos are shattered and no cliches left uninvoked. Like a porn film envisioned by Jacques Rivette, Breillat leaves in all the mundane details of everyday life, her heroine's escapades portrayed with all the slow moments left intact. Unfortunately, the verisimilitude seems little more than a trick to cover up the shallowness of her familiar material. When she breaks with this approach, Breillat displays an undeniable eye for style, particularly in a fantasy sequence involving a Cartesian brothel, but her film has virtually nothing else going for it, and does little that hasn't been done before. (If anything, it resembles the most shocking cinematic vision of 1975.) The sex may be real, but everything else about Romance feels fake, and as hollow and obvious as the irony of the title.