Romance feat. Justine Peres Smith

Hit Factory

Montreal-based film programmer, writer, and critic Justine Peres Smith joins us to discuss Catherine Breillat's 1999 film 'Romance'. It's a fascinating film that challenges patriarchal views of intimacy and desire, exploring the interiority of one woman's sexuality with a bracing level of nuance and honesty.

We discuss the film's graphic depictions of (purportedly unsimulated) sexual encounters and the fearless performer who gives these raw scenes life, Caroline Ducey. Then, we examine the film's uncommon embrace of the textures of feminine sexuality, subverting reductive and confining depictions in the mainstream, and offering an alternative to the capitalist impulses of "productive sexuality". Finally, we explore sex in film more broadly, and many audience's troubling aversion to exploring sexuality in ways that consider its emancipatory power.

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