SIMPLE PASSION

★★★ OUT 5 FEBRUARY (CURZON HOME CINEMA) / CERT TBC / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Danielle Arbid CAST Laetitia Dosch, Sergei Polunin

Sex scenes power this French erotic drama about a single mother in a physical relationship with a married Russian diplomat. Hélène (Laetitia Dosch, a tour-de-force in 2017’s Jeune Femme) lets Alexandre (Sergei Polunin) come and go on his schedule, contenting herself with his talents for providing pleasure. As in Adrian Lyne’s thematically comparable 9½ Weeks, Hélène loses her grip on the rest of her life, including a young son. For all the sexual intrigue, cipher-like lead characters challenge the attention span and sex scenes become repetitive. Drops of philosophy are spritzed across the final act. “Even feminists turn submissive when they’re in love,” Hélène tells a friend, but the big lesson from director Danielle Arbid concerns learning to limit submission.