A body can go months at a time without seeing a crime thriller that DOESN’T have an obligatory “strip club scene” where a malefactor hangs out, where the cops, a detective or a relative of a missing person goes to “get some answers” about a mystery.

One theory about why this is might be that these scenes are for the creeper producers who like to gawk and hit on the actresses and dancers who are cast in such scenes, or who hope to be cast.

The Hollywood movies about strippers include the ludicrous, pervy fantasy “Showgirls,” Demi’s “Striptease,” and a lot tales of the sordid, dangerous life led by those who go into that work.

But a French strip club movie? That would have to be an alotogether different thing. They must have “unions” over there. And workman’s comp. And all of the women are, you know, French.

“My Sole Desire” is a French drama about a novice in the trade, her awkward baptism by fire, the icky initiations of “private dance” parlours and the private bookings that take this “exotic dancer” trade into the realm of The World’s Oldest Profession.

The basement strip club named “À mon seul désir” (“My Sole Desire”) is a strange place for grad student Manon (Louise Chevillotte) to turn up. But here she is, looking for work.

The manager and guy who watches the door (Pedro Casablanc) raises an eyebrow, answers her “I’d like to try out” (in French with English subtitles) with a blunt warning to her and to the viewer.

This is “an erotic theater,” he grumps. It’s “not like in the movies.”

He lets her in, for free, just to see what she’s considering as a job. Everything about the show is down-market. The club has near-bare-walls decor, and is intimate to the point of tiny, with a clientele of regulars, pervy one-visit-and-banned types, and the curious.

“Not all clients are pigs” is hardly re-assuring.

The base pay is poor, dependant on tips and private “parlour” sessions to make it a living wage.

Manon takes in the stripteases, the stripper who deconstructs striptease as an art form, the duets and menage a trois acts. She has questions backstage.

But she is young and lithe and willing. If she can avoid crossing swords with the resident “young” (ballerina and perhaps schoolgirl uniform) act, the aloof Sati (Yuliya Abiss), perhaps Manon — taking the stage name “Aurora” from “Sleeping Beauty” — can get the hang of things. And if she can, Pablo the manager assures her, she’ll always be “in charge.”

The dressing room is filled with French variations on stripper archetypes — battle worn, sisterly and supportive and those figuring on doing this until they can start their real lives with marriage or a place at the Paris Conservatory acting school.

That would be Mia (Zita Hanrot), Aurora’s mentor, friend and eventually her lover.

Because whatever sexual charge Manon got from walking into that joint and shaking her money maker had its roots in a general disappointment in “love” and “men” and conventionality.

Mia’s acting dreams and professional status are in conflict. Nobody who can show off her moves on a pole — on a moving subway car — is likely to give all that up for work as an extra on some crummy movie, or life as a full-time acting student.

As their affair, triggered by their sexy teamwork onstage, deepens and the complications of Mia’s life come out, Aurora/Manon finds herself going further down the rabbit hole with ex-colleague Elody (Laure Giappiconi), who arranges private party appearances that devolve quickly and unsurprisingly into actual sex work.

Aurora will ignore Pablo the manager’s “rules” and warning number one — “No sex. Your mouth is gold, got it?” But will she, as the expression goes, “f— around and find out?”

The story is framed, with a stripper’s theatrical onstage narration, as a not-quite-cautionary fable.

Every now and then the ladies backstage will hear of a new beau and ask “Think he’ll give you a ring?” And they’re all pulling for Mia to land a spot in that Conversatory.

We ponder Manon’s true motives for doing this, but the script doesn’t really motivate her initial actions in any conventional sense. Disappointed by love, so she…takes up stripping and falls into a same-sex love affair?

Our student is plainly quite smart and more conventionally cute than vivacious or sexy. What’s her game here? Is this a research project?

But that’s me imposing Hollywood strip-club movie conventions on a distinctly French affair. She is, she declares, quite turned on by the whole idea of stripping for money, then more turned on by the act of having sex for money.

One question that hangs over all of this, over the fact that Mia has a boyfriend (Thimotée Robart) who doesn’t have a complete picture of the nature of their work and how often things go beyond mere stripping and over Manon/Aurora’s semi-detached way of taking a deeper dive into this life.

“So what?”

The sex isn’t all that sexy, explicit as it is. The lurid allure of this world is somewhat neutered and the story drifts around the idea of having a point, and then abandons that for a finale that has no ideas at all.

“My Sole Desire” stumbles at titillating and bores when it tries to conjure “meaning” out of all of this. It’s meek enough to make one miss the more garish and distinctly American strip clubs visited in American films. At least with those, you figure the producers were getting something out of it.

Rating: unrated, explicit sex, suggestions of violence, smoking, profanity

Cast: Louise Chevillotte, Zita Hanrot,Yuliya Abiss, Thimotée Robart and Laure Giappiconi

Credits: Directed by Lucie Borleteau, scripted by Lucie Borleteau, Claire Bourreau and Laure Giappiconi. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:58