Como Eu Briguei (Por Minha Vida Sexual)

This movie was very, very boring. I can't really say it should have been edited down to two hours and then it would be better, because there isn't two hours worth of good movie material there. The actor who played Paul was good. Actually, all the actors and actresses seemed very realistic, but that's just not enough to make the movie interesting. If someone wants to make a movie, they ought to have a story to tell first. In Ma Vie Sexuelle, there was no story. Anyway, the atmosphere and the camera work was good. But the movie still stinks. I'd only recommend it to someone in prison who's watched every other movie in the world first. Or to someone I wanted to show what cool hair looks like...

In my comments on "J'embrasse Pas", a film I much admire, I mentioned the decline of the French cinema in recent years. As an example to substantiate this, look no further than "Ma Vie Sexuelle", a work of gargantuan proportions (3 hours running time) that for me fails to transcend the commonplace it seems to be celebrating and becomes trapped in inertia. On the surface much of it is not unlike a Rohmer film. There is a group of young people living in Paris. Paul, the central character is a University tutor. There are at least three young woman in his life and he moves from one to another indecisively. There are endless scenes in cafes, in one anothers' apartments and at parties; the very stuff of Rohmer. The Master, however, would have made it last half the time with several times the degree of perception. "Ma Vie Sexuelle", on the other hand, has a curious lack of purpose, often losing its sense of directional balance. What to make of the two flashbacks to Paul's childhood that seem to add nothing to our knowledge of his character? And then there is the strange figure of Rabier, a senior lecturer whose return to the University seems to fill Paul with unease over his inadequacy to cope with professional life. Presumably he is intended to play a pivotal role like one of Iris Murdoch's "enchanters". But how can he when he is depicted as a quirky idiot who goes everywhere with a pet monkey? The sudden change of mood to black comedy when the monkey becomes trapped behind a radiator is curiously at variance with the rest of the film. There is a background score that, with its suggestion of unease, would fit better in a Chabrol thriller than these mundane goings-on. To add to all the muddled pretentiousness there is a voice-over narrative so beloved by earlier French masters such as Resnais and Truffaut but here there is nothing perceptive in what is said. It simply supplies the connections that the Taiwanese masters, Hou Xiaoxian and Edward Yang, would have demanded far more subtly we make for ourselves. The film is thus a mishmash of influences completely lacking a sense of individuality. Let those in search of titillation from a film so entitled beware. "La Vie Sexuelle" is almost puritanically staid. It belongs to a much older Wave than the New.

A fascinating look at a group of post-grad friends as they drink, fight and fall in love. Very philosophical men, very beautiful women (or is it vice versa?) ponder what it means to be in a relationship and approaching 30.

It's a pretty long movie, but I'm so entertained by everything in it that I don't give a damn if it all falls neatly into a precise trajectory. My first viewing had me grinning in sheer pleasure. Now, having bought the video, I sometimes start and stop it at random places, and always am immediately engaged wherever I happen to dive in.

The film is not at all linear, but elaborates on a situation: Paul, having made a promising start as a philosophy prodigy, has become frozen, only to watch his friends all become successful. His love life is similarly suspended: he can neither be with his girlfriend of ten years nor let her go, while engaging in clandestine affairs with women who either torture him or are unavailable. The movie consists of all the permutations of romance and sex and humiliation and mistakes he goes through as he squirms his way back into life again. Now, I don't know if this sounds fun or not, but what's wonderful about it is, first of all, that it's very funny, and second, that it's so real.

Love and sex are presented as they happen in real life - nothing neat and clean, but a chaos made of moments of fascination an passion and searching and confusion made by two (or more) people whose lives are deep waters. Everything here is instantly recognizable and completely unpredictable. Candid, sexy...

French Realism is like any other Realism, but longer. The Realist film-maker shoots "real people" in "real life". Here, in this film, there are some guys and girls, and they meet, talk, drink, eat, sleep, make love, wake up, walk, stop walking, look at something, walk past a traffic sign, light a cigarette next to a car, etc., etc. Maybe if you were a native of an entirely different culture you might find all this interesting, but my recommendation is to avoid the film and go out with your friends instead. Maybe film your evening on video and send it to Despleschin so he can re-edit it as "Ma Vie Sexuelle 2." The film is well made and well acted, but my 93-year-old grandmother is slightly more interesting and a bit less predictable. Sad to say, but this kind of film seems to be increasingly what is imported from France; films by youngish film-makers who suffer from that terrible narcissism: that people like them are endlessly fascinating and worth 3 hours of a stranger's time. In most cases this is sadly not so: my friends are much more interesting, my life is more real, and my thoughts are more profound. Not intrinsically, but just because I live them, I don't read them off a screen.