Chroniques sexuelles d'une famille d'aujourd'hui

The original French release of this film contains, as you might expect from the title, lots of explicit sex. However, the US/British version was severely censored, with all the sex and most of the nudity removed, which, if you think about it, is pretty silly for a film with that title. The trouble is, most of the people selling this DVD/Blu-Ray don't tell you which it is they're offering. The ONLY way to know is to check the run time -- the French (complete) version is 85 minutes long, with no English subtitles, and the bowdlerized "safe" version is 79 minutes and has English subtitles. Still waiting for the full version WITH subtitles as my French is good but not that good.

I'm giving this a top score (which I do extremely rarely) not because it it a great film but, because it is a much needed film that no one has been brave enough to make until now.

Reading the other reviews I get the impression that the writers watched the film as 'entertainment', it is that and has enough of a plot & deep enough characters to stand up as such.

However, I believe the films real value shows when seen as what a school biology curriculum may title as "Facts of life: Advanced Course (Sex As A Part Of Life)". It is clichéd and a little unreal, as such educational films are, but still very good.

Of course this film is never going to be shown as part of a school curriculum, or is it? Life itself is a school. Most of us are raised with a closed-minded attitude to sex, and as a result have a perverted view of it.

This film shows us that all us adult pupils of the school of life (from age 16 to the end) are sexual beings for which sex can be a very enjoyable & enriching part. This applies whether or not we have a 'good-looking' appearance, sex can be a beautiful act even when old wrinklies are involved. It also shows that it is to be treated with care & responsibility. It also drops in that sex is something to be shared, not taken or merely bought. While commercialised sex is at best empty & possibly damaging.

Someday this film will be unnecessary, in which case this would be merely entertainment. When that happens I would probably give this a mere 5 or 6, and the other reviews I see would be apposite. Until then this film is great art, given that great art is meant to challenge us & make us think.

Unfortunately most of us have a 'broken' thinking machine so most only see porn. For those can do only see it a such, try watching & understanding the expressions of the sexual participants, both pre & post coition, also during. You will see that love and care comes out much more vividly than eroticism. You will also how it can be awkward for first-time participants but then, as they learn to relax with each other, how the bond between them grows. This is not porn, this is a very worthwhile piece of art for whom I would like to praise all the participants.

Edit: I saw a pirate version of this film after it was taken from a P2P download. But having seen it I decided that it was worth buying and attempted to. However, I was only able to source worthless censored versions. So it seems that I am disallowed from financially supporting the making of such films, and that we are only allowed to learn about sex from perverts (i.e. schoolmarm types & pornography). Hmmmm, what a weird world we live in... it just emphasises the need for more stuff like this film.

Trust the French to make thoughtful, explicit, ground-breaking cinema. SEXUAL CHRONICLES OF A FRENCH FAMILY is, as the title would suggest, a comic drama about the sex lives of three generations of a close-knit French family, and the various mini-dramas that arise from each. The controversial thing about it is that the sex scenes - and there are plenty of them - are real.

In fact, the sex is presented in such an ordinary, matter of fact way, that this is hardly pornographic. It's almost like a documentary in places. The actors, who have no inhibitions whatsoever, happen to be very realistic in their various parts and the way their different lives intertwine is well achieved. Watch out for THE RETURNED's Pierre Perrier, who has a last scene cameo.

A previous reviewer of this film suggests that people under the age of 35 might find this film difficult. However, i felt the opposite, that people over 45 would find this film blows away what they have previously known.

To the older generations raised on the explosive challenges of the post war decades of a cinema which raged against both repressive censorship laws and out-moded social norms, their sense of history is invested in what is understood to be a participation in an iconic sexual revolution among other things.

So many of the films of the 60s and 70s both punctuated a sense of historical change and ushered in a new permissiveness. Yet none could stand today against what we see in this essentially small film.

Today's youth are emerging and sex is still central to the radical. Not one of the great classic works of cinema which created a chime with sexual liberation depicted the level of explicit sex which is slowly becoming the norm in new independent cinema. It is in many respects an extraordinary shift in the language of cinema.

This new and overt form of sexual language is not a reaction against repressive norms as it was in the 60s, but rather reflects the effect on a generation of unbound exposure to pornography via the internet from early childhood. The younger generation are so sophisticated in their understanding of sex, that it is quite the norm to extend into the language of their cinema the digital habits which are available to them in private.

To an older generation this may come as a shock. We're not used to such a sense of ease with the genitalia. The male penis has been a heavily censored object in cinema until very recently, though largely through the prudish choice of a director-base which was essentially male and heterosexual. Surprisingly, considering the militancy of the feminist movement, depiction of the clitoris was associated very much with male exploitation of women and has never previously been celebrated as such in cinema. These old types of restrictions, essentially generated through the dialogues of the cultural liberators of the 60s, 70s and 80s appear to have had their day.

It is true that France, and Europe historically have been much more relaxed about the depiction of sex in cinema compared with for example the US and the UK. However this film really brings right up to date that natural licence and we move into a new territory of depicted sexual intimacy.

All of the films emerging which depict graphic sex and i could name at least half a dozen off the top of my head, are not dabbling in pornography. Rather, what is emerging is a new world, a new honesty, a new openness, a new level of maturity, of truth, a language of signs and symbols well beyond the old order of the avoided, couched, suggested and coded.

In this new utopia, the liberation has in some sense already been long around via the advent of the internet culture. Cinema needs to catch up. The old sexual reality are no longer contain the issues of the day. Sex now becomes a way of intensifying the present tense and claiming life through a sensuality finally contextualised by a pure kind of democracy. We can all see ourselves as sexual beings. We can all live, we can all have what we need. Because we all are anyway.

Sex has always been linked in some sense to the arrival of the revolutionary. Certainly this new level of sexually explicit toleration blows away the old struggles which turn out to have only come so far in the end. In other films of this kind, the ease with the sexually explicit has usually been attributed to the emerging younger generation. This film breaks the mold by suggesting that everyone has nothing to hide, both young and old. it's a good development and a generous form of inclusion. Until now one had the impression that the younger generation were only able to celebrate their own interests. This film confirms that this is no longer the case and both the curiosity and technology of the young is capable of transforming and touching the lives of all generations.

I don't want to get into a discussion whether the explicit display of sex - the term 'soft porn' comes to mind - is a good or a bad thing, or necessary or not. I don't mind. The movie starts with a good idea and promise. The teenage son of the family is caught masturbating in school. The mother takes it rather easy and doesn't make a big deal of it, but she starts to think about her own sex life and that of her widowed father in law. I thought that this would lead to the uncovering of suppressed sexual desires of the parents and grandfather, and that this could cause some frictions or maybe hurt feelings somewhere. It holds vaguely with some of the characters involved, but the only real forward going story is that of the son having his first time experiences with a girl from school.

Unfortunately, there is not much left of the film when you take the heavy breathing scenes out. You can write the entire plot on the back of a postage stamp. For almost an hour and a half, the movie shows a family of three generations in which most of them have a rather fulfilled sex life. This is nice, but why do I have to watch them doing it?