La vie sexuelle des Belges 1950-1978

First movie of the belgian conceptual artist and disrespectful director Jan Bucquoy. This film starts the series of the sexual life of the belgians, composed by 4 full-lenght films that introduce subversion in belgian cinema history, also whit an independent production system. You'll not find any explicit sexual sequence, you'll find the representation of a complex ideological system, the history of a non conventional life, the alternative vision of a country that hide aspirations of general revolution of life. Bucquoy build a conceptual cinema that try to destroy the "representation" of the spectacular cinema in order to leave all the place to the ideas. The word "sexual" hides the words "politics","art", "desire", "communication"... it hides all words to reveal the language free by all social deviation. This first movie show 28 years of the life of a man who try to find the best answer to the only really important philosophical question, as the french writer Camus wrote: is it worth living life or not? From his little village in Flandre to Bruxelles, trough sexual relationships, political activism, literature dreams, you will see the existential journey of Jan Bucquoy (the name of the protagonist) who try to grow in the body and in the intellect.

This film starts as a rapid-fire series of childhood memories, narrated by the main char. These episodes all have a sexual flavour. My favourite is the beautiful aunt who never wears knickers and parades around in the nude in front of the young boy, who concentrates only on his painting. But it goes downhill fast after that. The story completely loses focus, and is a lot less sexy. Disappointing, after such a promising start.

When I saw the movie for the first time I was less enthusiastic than now.You have to see the movie at least two times,otherwise you think that it is a movie for idiots.Jean-Henri Compère is strong as a writer who explores the sexual life of the capital of Belgium and his indifference to his own fate is pathetic.His fatalism is in strong contrast to his will-power to become famous.Is this why as a young boy his sexual awakening came too late in his Flemish village?Or because his mother was opposing his career outside of the place where he had a rather happy youth?Marriage seems to be the turning point of his life,but it is not what he expected.Many Belgians have a divorce after being married for some years and he will not be the exception.The sexual life of the Belgians may be boring in itself,but in this movie you never have the impression that things do not go on.Every scene is a surprise and to this you can certainly add the beautiful images by Michel Baudour,and the music of Will Tura and Marc Aryan.

Before he made movies, Jan Bucquoy was a famous and controversial comic book writer. Based on Vidon and Bucquoy's original graphic novel "La vie sexuelle de JP Leureux, Tout va bien",this first feature is a touching mix of Cynicism and dead pan humor. The story revolves around the chronological thread of the various women of the narrator's life. Whereas the original comic book was built on a succession of many quick portraits and short cynical reappraisals, the film comes out as single ongoing framework, sarcastic, yet tainted with nostalgia. Overwhelmingly successful at indy film festivals around the world, its obscure and rather limited distribution seem to ad a certain cult value. You won't find the video tape at Blockbuster's, but it's out there...

This movie is not entirely autobiographical: I think the author takes his life as a model to narrate us the problem of the upbringing youth and their sexual apprenticeship. He starts from his native Harelbeke, a little town in Belgium. His first sexual experience is with "sale culotte" which remains a no-event. He must learn his first kiss, and after all his beginnings are very romantic. Then he moves to Brussels, the university with the demonstrations against Vietnam and where he hopes to start his career as a writer. The film develops in free sketches which show his marriage and divorce and all the lovely girls he meets. After all this film can be shown to kids of ten years old and with some comment by the parents I am sure they will learn a lot which can be very useful for their adult life.