Instead, what it gave us was two young and relatively untested actresses, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, deftly describing, in the grim northern French town of Lille, the heady emotional rushes and sudden power shifts of an emerging relationship. So it made the cutesy girl-on-girl action in Bound (2006) and Mulholland Drive (2001) seem dubious and cheap. The hideous rape of Monica Bellucci in Irreversible (2002)? The grimly determined humping from Japanese 1976 classic In the Realm of the Senses? All gone. The film, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013, wiped away everything that had gone before it. From Swedish nudes in 1953 ( Summer with Monika) to the butter-based penetration of 1972 ( Last Tango in Paris) to crazy irascible beach-side sessions in 1986 ( Betty Blue), nothing screams 'art house' more than a smartly directed and gamely acted sex scene.
