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As classical Hollywood cinema scholars David Bordwell and Kristen Johnson pointed out, the traditional American film plot is driven by a “goal-oriented protagonist.” That’s not necessarily the case with European art cinema, which may explain why U.S. audiences have such a hard time connecting to movies where it’s not clear what the hero wants. They won’t have that problem with “Domestique,” an obsessive-compulsive Czech-Slovak body-horror film — easily the most uncomfortable first-date movie Central Europe has produced since “Wetlands” — that centers on two characters who’re as goal-oriented as they come: hard-core Roman (Jiří Konvalinka) is a training maniac, working overtime to recover from a cycling injury, while his health-nut wife Charlotte (Tereza Hofová) wants a child, keeping meticulous track of her fertility calendar.

An audaciously alienating anti-romance from first-time director Adam Sedlák, “Domestique” hardly ever leaves the sterile modern apartment where this high-strung couple co-exists. Otherwise...