TORONTO -- A young Russian woman leaves terminally grey St. Petersburg behind for a better life, only to be sold into an Italian sex trafficking ring in "Trance," directed with a very heavy hand by Portugal's Teresa Villaverde.

Closely following the downer trajectory taken by Lukas Moodysson's superior "Lilya 4-Ever," the dreary drama, which, prior to its Toronto Festival screening was a Director's Fortnight selection at Cannes this year, is a tough watch but not just for the disturbing subject matter.

Ana Moreira's Sonia, who seems to be going through life in a catatonic trance even prior to her numbing descent into deep, dark degradation, doesn't look back as she trades one bleak existence for another, first ending up working illegally at a German auto plant.

But it doesn't take long before a Russian colleague takes advantage of her naive, passive nature, and she's sold as a sex slave to a man who ships her off to an Italian bordello, where she requires "breaking in."

Still refusing to get with the program, Sonia's subsequently imprisoned in a huge mansion, where she becomes the forbidden object of desire for the owner's simpering idiot son.

Throughout it all, she appears to take her fate in nihilistic stride as writer-director Villaverde piles on the gross indecencies.

While the title no doubt refers to the mental state into which women in Sonia's situation may lapse as a survival mechanism, it's also one that will be likely shared by those remaining in the theater who have had to endure two-plus hours of the filmmaker's relentlessly unsubtle style of storytelling.