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"He gave my life rhythm. I measured time by him." Strand Releasing has unveiled an official US trailer for an indie French drama titled Simple Passion, from filmmaker Danielle Arbid. Adapted from the novel by Annie Ernaux. In this sexually frank portrait of female lust & vulnerability, a mother falls into an addictive relationship with a Russian diplomat, with whom she has nothing in common. This story "documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion." It was originally chosen as part of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival selection, but later premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival. The film stars Laetitia Dosch and Sergei Polunin as the lovers, plus Lou-Teymour Thion and Caroline Ducey. This looks like a cautionary tale about lust more than a story about romance. This trailer is Nsfw. Here's the official US trailer (+ poster) for Danielle Arbid's Simple Passion, direct from YouTube...

Laetitia Dosch is sensational as a lecturer passionately embroiled with Sergei Polunin’s reptilian Russian diplomat

The French-Swiss actor Laetitia Dosch lavishes all her underappreciated star quality on this insouciantly explicit movie about amour fou and erotic obsession, adapted by the director Danielle Arbid from the 1991 novel by Annie Ernaux.

Dosch plays Hélène, a university lecturer in Paris, divorced with a young son, who has fallen passionately in love with an icily sexy, dead-eyed and tattooed young Russian diplomat called Alexandre, played by Ukrainian-born ballet star Sergei Polunin. When he is not driving too fast while buzzing from Scotch in his top-of-the-range Audi and giving Hélène top-of-the-range orgasms, Alexandre has a habit of not returning her pitifully submissive voicemails. He casually leaves her waiting in the midday hotel room where they’d agreed to meet in all her brand new La Perla lingerie, while he disappears back to Moscow to...

Despite their individual box-office success, the exceedingly mild Bdsm frolics of the “Fifty Shades” films did little to revive Hollywood’s interest in the kind of frosty, high-style erotic drama that was de rigueur in the early 1990s — around the time that French writer Annie Ernaux scored some international renown with her sexually frank autofiction novel “Simple Passion.” French filmmakers’ loyalty to such material has remained more steadfast, however, so it’s somewhat surprising that it’s taken nearly 20 years for Ernaux’s provocation to reach the screen. Finally, Franco-Lebanese director Danielle Arbid has taken a gutsy stab at it, with an imperfect but glassily compelling study of obsessive, finally debilitating desire that honors its source with an unblinking female gaze.

The result, publicly premiering in San Sebastian after being selected for this year’s cancelled Cannes fest, plays something like Catherine Breillat let loose on E.L. James, with all the sensual highs and occasional,...