Love and Bruises is a 2011 French-Chinese drama directed by Lou Ye in which Hua, a young Chinese student freshly dumped by her older boyfriend in Paris, crosses paths with Mathieu — a rough, working-class French laborer who forces himself on her and then apologizes, and yet she goes back to him anyway, beginning a brutally intense relationship built on raw physical desire, verbal abuse, and psychological dependency. As Mathieu grows increasingly insecure, he tests Hua's fidelity by having his friend Giovanni rape her — and yet even that cannot break Hua's addiction to him, until she finally uncovers dark secrets about Mathieu's life and makes the painful decision to return to China.