The plot revolves around their forbidden love, female autonomy (including a servant's abortion scene), and critiques of patriarchal constraints like forced marriages and women's artistic suppression, with men deliberately excised to create a 'utopian' all-female space that highlights systemic oppression. Director Céline Sciamma, a self-proclaimed feminist advocating for gender parity (e.g., 5050x2020), explicitly states intentions to invent a 'lesbian imaginaire,' 'set fire' to traditional cinema, depict the 'jump scare' of patriarchy, and explore the 'politics of love' and sexual liberation, prioritizing ideological reinvention over neutral storytelling.

This activist framing—celebrated in progressive analyses as a manifesto against male-dominated narratives—compromises the work's universality by making contemporary feminist and queer messaging the emotional and thematic driver, alienating conservative viewers who decry it as polemical reduction of romance to sexual politics. No race-swapping or DEI casting controversies, but the prominence of non-traditional queer representation as the foundational premise in a historical setting elevates the intrusion.