I have tried to understand why she cast Sifreddi but I don't think it's fair on the other actors, who worked really hard." For the first time, Ducey looks downcast "Nobody understood exactly what she wanted to do. "Catherine Breillat's casting of Sifreddi was very hard for me," she says, looking hurt. "She pulled this stunt with this commercial porn star, when Romance was supposed to be fighting against that kind of thing. In a welter of nudge, nudge jokes about his nickname ("26 centimetres") even Catholic MP Rosalyne Bachelot joked that she'd liked to see him in action.Ducey, whose father has yet to see the film (her mother's been three times), is angry that such pre-publicity made people mistake Romance for a porn film. The veteran of over 1,000 porn films, this was Sifreddi's first "straight" movie, although his role calls upon little beyond his sexual prowess. "She wanted to try something new and I thought her ideas were interesting.

She explained that the three religions, Catholicism, Judaism and Islam have created the same problems for women, because the woman has to be pure Either you are a mother or a prostitute Existing in between is hard. I thought this film would be important for feminism: educational".Audiences, though, put aside such cerebral concerns, embarking instead on an amused debate about the vital statistics of Ducey's co-star, Rocco Sifreddi. I didn't want to see people doing it, or go to a nightclub."As for lubricious literature, Ducey "read a little Sade at college" but otherwise remained blithely unschooled in erotica.When Ducey's friends told her that they had heard Breillat boasting about making "a real porno film", Ducey decided that the director was just being provocative. "There were a lot of things in this script I didn't want to understand," she admits "Such as the sado-masochism ... "This is a terrific role for an actress because it plays with limits. You know, Romane Bohringer wanted to play this part!" Ducey says excitedly.With only a month before shooting started, Ducey skipped a crash course on kinky sex and instead, rather sweetly, went to a theatre workshop to practise her improvisations. I told myself `No!', I was terrified and called my agent and asked him: "What is this? Why did you send me to this casting? What does it mean? What does she want? He told me not to worry and said it's always like that, `Catherine Breillat always writes very crude stories, but when she shoots them it's very different'."Apart from anything else, it was the career break from heaven.

I wanted to call her back that evening, but I told myself, no I have to read the script first, I have to be able to talk about it.""So the next Sunday morning I was lying in bed with my boyfriend asleep next to me and I started to read the script And it was horrible! I started to cry. "I was the last one to leave the place where we were shooting, so we took the subway together and she gave me a scenario and told me to call her back and tell her what I thought. Her ideas were interesting, and I told myself, `this woman, she's incredible. She seems to be very clever'."Fascinated, Ducey found herself at a screen test with six other girls and Breillat "We clicked," she remembers.

I'd never heard of Catherine Breillat before but I felt good with her We made a real connection I'd never been looked at like that before When she stares at people she seems to disappear She's very precise, very concentrated. Dressed in a pair of baggy jeans, white pumps and a tiny vest, she looks like a little girl as she puffs on a cigarette and remembers how she fell in love with director Catherine Breillat."I arrived for my first audition on Friday the 13th. "It said it was about `a young girl who is a teacher who is in love with her boyfriend. Their love stops and she goes down to hell'."Younger and livelier than her alter ego, Ducey also seems smaller and more fragile in the flesh than she does on screen.