This film is a throwback to the 1970's and 1980's, where films had to pretend to be exploring psychology to show lots of scenes of love making. It is in the "Belle de Jour," and "Emmanuel" style of filmmaking.

Belén Fabra is quite beautiful and she's a good actress. you feel her enjoyment of sex, but also her shyness.

This is a gentle and nicely photographed/set designed movie that has just enough of a plot to hold the viewer's interest.

If there could be a genre called feminist porn, this might be a type. The film is as anxious about revealing the lead character's emotional state as it is about revealing her body.

The lead character, Valérie, learns lessons about love and sex, but it is hard to say exactly what those lessons are. Perhaps, it is only that they don't always turn out well, but that's no reason to stop either activity.

Geraldine Chaplin makes a quick appearance as a wise grandmother. It is great to see her and she adds a bit of seriousness to this quite light and enjoyable movie.

Leonardo Sbaraglia is good as Valerie's handsome potential life mate and lover, Jaime.

Valére is very close to her grandmother Marie Tasso (Geraldine Chaplin). She struggles to find love ever since losing her virginity at 15. She writes all of her sexual experiences in a diary. She falls for Jaime but when she tells him about her pregnancy, he becomes unstable and rejects her. She is short of money and takes a job as a high class prostitute.

This is an art house erotic movie but I don't get a sense of tension. She's basically a single woman looking for love. Then she takes the prostitution job for the cash. The character is missing the desperate sexual needs that the title suggests. It needs to heighten the danger. It's artsy nudity without much tension.

This really belongs on the Lifetime Movie Network or someplace. Belen Fabra is the 27-year-old Valere whose only real friend is her withered grandmother, Geraldine Chaplin. At fifteen Valere has sex for the first time. She feels there's something going on but it leaves her empty. Curiosity leads her into the byways of sex. She falls in love with Jaime finally, who seems to adore her. Coincidentally, if you're finally going to love a man for the first time in your life and you're now in your twenties and want to settle down and have children and build a home (whatever that means),Jaime is your kind of guy. He's filthy rich. He drives a Jaguar.

But it wasn't long after Valere yielded her virginity and began writing in her diary about how she really need love, that I could see where the movie was headed. After fruitlessly banging dozens of guys of varying temperaments and races and quirks, she finds Jaime and everything seems to be going along swimmingly. The future is bright.

But we experienced movie viewers know that in a movie like this, tragedy is just around the corner. Alright, Jaime has a slight problem with premature ejaculation -- if two minutes is "premature" -- but he showers her with flowers and diamonds, and he moves her into an expensive new flat overlooking Barcelona and the Med beyond.

Jaime is too perfect. So what's wrong with Jaime? He's not gay (although he may be bisexual for all we know). Is he a drug dealer? A mob member? Does he have a history of fraud? There has to be SOMETHING wrong with Jaime because that's the kind of movie this is! I won't reveal Jaime's secret.

Anyway, Valere's search for the cosmos takes her into a high-end brothel where she meets yet more flawed men. Finally, after reviewing the serial tragedies of her life, she comes to the realization that true happiness lies in self acceptance. In Valere's case, this means living for the moment with sex as your most immediate and available instrument. The fact that this is where she started lies unaddressed. She marches off bravely into the rain, a big smile on her face, triumphant music swelling in the background.

As an erotic movie, and choosing comparisons with almost identical plots, this falls somewhere between "Emmanuel" (which was funny) and "Bel de Jour" (which was pornography with class). Lots of nudity, none of it vulgar, and lots of simulated sex, ditto.

It's all about a woman's search for self actualization through the achievement of perfect orgasms, physical and spiritual. My, how things have changed. Why, when I was a young feller, sparking a gal, I was the one doing the pursuing. Why, I remember having to walk one hundred and fifty miles each way through the snow to visit a gal -- barefoot! We young lads was always met at the door by the gal's father, who wanted to know, right off the bat, if our intentions towards his daughter was honorable. I got so tired of saying, "Yes, sir," that once, feeling real cheeky, I said, "Absolutely not." That's how I got this scar. No, no. The one down here by the Krause end bulbs.

Overall, what the movie has is an abundance of Belen Fabra's not easily dismissible and nicely assembled nude figure. Other than that, it's a pretty tiresome bore. When Valere is making love with Jaime, she kept checking the clock to see how much longer the act would take. I found myself doing the same thing. I believe I know how Valere's physical being ends. Drawing on the logic of the plot, she finally achieves the most exquisite possible orgasm and, having nothing left to search for, she deliquesces, turns into a vapor, and vanishes into the ether.