Too Much Flesh

This film really opened my eyes as to what, Jean-Marc's dreams are. I wish that JM would make his film's available in the US. Too Much Flesh, is a wonder film that is very hard to understand.It took me watching it a few times to get what JM's concept was, in this film. If you can get past all the sex, and masturbation. You will see a deeper meaning in this film. All the pain and, the longing for love. I found that JM is truly one of the most convincing actors I have ever seen. He has convinced me!

Kind of drawn in by the erotic scenes, only to realize this was one of the most amateurish and unbelievable bits of film I've ever seen. Sort of like a high school film project. What was Rosanna Arquette thinking?? And what was with all those stock characters in that bizarre supposed Midwest town? Pretty hard to get involved with this one. No lessons to be learned from it, no brilliant insights, just stilted and quite ridiculous (but lots of skin, if that intrigues you) videotaped nonsense....What was with the bisexual relationship, out of nowhere, after all the heterosexual encounters. And what was with that absurd dance, with everybody playing their stereotyped roles? Give this one a pass, it's like a million other miles of bad, wasted film, money that could have been spent on starving children or Aids in Africa.....

Despite my opinion that J.M. Barr and Elodie Bouchez are great actors, them two just having an awful lot of true erotic scenes doesn't give this rather thin developed and predictable story much more essence. Just like in *Intimacy* I don't agree with the necessity of all that.

It must have been much fun to film it, but from the movie I get the impression that the story or the film itself was not the actor's or team's primal focus during the shoot. Or probably not even during the writing?

Yes, this was pure unbelievable condescending babble. We know that the French often have a skewed idea of the USA, it's puritanism and views towards sex. As an American (Hoosier) who lives in France, I have ample opportunity to observe these attitudes. And while some of these preconceived notions may be true, NOT ONE ELEMENT of the midwestern town portrayed in this film rang real. A man who has never had sex because he was told in high school 20 years prior that his penis is too big? Where in the world would you find that? A juke box in a bar that plays only vintage bluegrass? A town with maybe 16 people less than two hours away from Chicago, but with no major gas station, no Tvs in the home, no McDonalds, no kids... A population that knows each other's intimate details yet relentlessly gets together like one big family that hates each other. The adult males plant whoopee cushions at the local cafe, have farms but don't harvest, kill the guy they don't like in front of everyone and seem to get away with it, and all with equal emotion? The liberated French girl who will screw the 17 year old virgin boy because of her sexual generosity, the too much flesh guy who goes from getting off in cornfields by the mere breath of an Illinois breeze to helping deflower this same 17 year old farm boy? HELP! I am so baffled and astounded by the absurdity of this film that I am not expressing clearly how ridiculous it is. Go see it for the A-to-Z primer on what to avoid. Gosh, I hope I didn't ruin it for you!

Although this film may have been a (somewhat) unrealistic handling of the sort of back woods US towns I grew up in, Too Much Flesh likely did much more justice to the US than, say, Chocolat did to France. At least the French makers did the movie, set in Illinois, in English. Both films look into the provincialist persecution of freer sexuality and mores, but, with regard to the nature of sexual experience, at least, Too Much Flesh was a bit more realistic. It's not realistic just in that the "sex scenes" showed (almost) everything, but that real thought went into the directing of them. I noticed that the audience, like myself, was involved with these scenes just like any other acting in the movie - not seeing them just as an added entertainment perk, but as an important part of the subject matter. Overall, the main character, Lyle, the one with too much flesh, was a very inspired character, as was his actor, Jean-Marc Barr. The wife played by Rosanna Arquette embodied a very tortured and, I think, very possible psyche. Sure, there are weaknesses in the film. It might have been better if there were no "message" in the end, but leaving out the ending, the movie's progression was refreshing, with many interesting and original plot developments and a good number of laughs, too.