Una relazione privata

An unnamed man and woman find each other through the personal ads of a sex magazine, to engage in a pornographic act that forms their mutual fantasy (the camera, old-Hollywood style, lingers in the hotel corridor during the act itself). They meet again; and again. They start to get to know and like each other. They make normal love. Maybe they'll have a normal relationship. But the film continually reminds us of the proximity of the crowd, within which they might blur back into being strangers; of the beguilingly complex topography of relationships (you feel the emotional landscape as electrically as you feel her finger trace the contours of his face and back in one scene); of the possibility for devastatingly wrong moves even amid the most enveloping intimacy; of the inevitability that even our profoundest memories will erode; of the relationship between the experience and the interpretation of an event. This is the epitome of a concise, elegant, sensitively written and acted European film; not designed to move an artistic mountain, but a certain crowd-pleaser.

This is one French movie which I am pretty sure will not run through an American remake. It has all the elements that attract the intellectual European movie goer, and all what is rejected by the typical American viewer. It is a love story with two characters, almost everything happens in just two places (a restaurant and a hotel room), drama is based on characters development, and eroticism is all but explicit. It is a love story, but it departs the usual romantic comedy pattern and escapes the cheap happy end that spoils that many American movies. Acting is superb, and actually the best part in the film, though it is sometimes too static, more Russian or East European style than French. At the end, you are left with a simple story of un-realized love, the message being that the imposed limits of communication according to which the heros decided to play decide their ultimate faith, and the faith of their relationship. Not too much, but decent cinema if you like the style and genre. 8/10 on my personal scale.

In the search for intimacy and meaning in the dehumanizing urban environment, quite personable, intelligent and attractive people have to resort to newspaper or online ads to meet someone for romance or just companionship. In this film, however, a man and woman, both attractive and personable, seek depersonalised sex, not involvement. Or so they thought. Of course they become emotionally involved, and then the question becomes: will they continue?

This is a very nicely judged piece using a combination of interview sequences intercut with flashbacks. There are no distractions: we focus almost entirely on Nathalie and Sergi as they are interviewed separately about their affair. Their versions are not identical but there is only one flashback version of each encounter so there is not a lot of confusion. The curious thing is that although intimacy develops it follows the rules of the original impersonal pornographic encounter – no names, no talk about jobs and families and friends, no swapping of personal detail. They meet once or twice a week in the same coffee bar and hotel room for six months or more, yet still know virtually nothing about each other (apart from their sexual fantasies). Why this holding back? Neither is currently attached to anyone else. The only explanation is that they really didn't want to get involved, or don't want to take the risk. Burned before? Who knows?

Nathalie Baye as the (slightly older) woman is poised, charming and not obviously hung up about sex. She seeks the zipless f*** of feminist legend. She does have trouble expressing her feelings – for her `I love you' are the hardest words in the language (all right, `Je t'aime'). Sergi Lopez as her homme de jour is a bit more emotionally expressive but still holds himself back.

I suppose one could see the film as suggesting that the alienation of modern life can be traced to an unwillingness to become emotionally attached, that life is faster and cleaner if relationships are disposable without much pain. These two want intimacy, but they don't want to pay for it.

It's a well-made movie with plenty of Parisian bustle and lots of nice close-ups. It's all a bit sad, though. Have we been reduced to being consumers of personal relationships as well as sex?

A careful & thought-provoking examination of how two lives intersect.... and how the nature of that intersection defines and then changes the level of personal engagement. The film is compelling in its continual exploration of how we know ourselves, how we know each other...the lens & filters (real & imagined) through which we know the world. Both performances were exemplary...and the conversations (which drove the bulk of the film) remarkable for their seeming realism. (even with subtitles!)

From its title, A Pornographic Affair might seem like the kind of film that might appeal to a 13-yr old boy just entering puberty. Its actually a very restrained and beautiful love story. The format of the narrative is in the form of interviews of Him and Her after the affair has ended. There is a mysterious fantasy which brought them together. We never find out, despite the interviewers repeated prodding, what that fantasy was that led Her to advertise and Him to read and respond to the advertisement.

Inevitably, the physical aspects of that fantasy don't matter because the two eventually move on to more conventional forms of sexual activity. Neither knows anything about the other - children, marital status, profession or age. Both are good people and inevitably the affair has to develop into something more. Both are charming and beautiful in their own way. Eventually they begin to like and be infatuated with each other.

Obviously, adult themes are explored in this film, but there is no gratuitous nudity or smut. It has a surprisingly human touch even though the route followed in a conventional relationship is inverted here.