Reviews & Ratings for
 My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument More at IMDbPro »Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle) (original title)

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24 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
love as it happens, 2 March 2000
9/10
Author: bldonnell from LA, CA

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...

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10 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
How I Got Sidetracked, 25 June 2005
6/10
Author: writers_reign

It's fair to say that had I not found Rois et Reine so rich, complex and ultimately enjoyable I may not have taken the trouble (to say nothing of the three hours needed) to watch this earlier work by Arnaud Desplechin toplining the same two very fine actors (Manu Devos and Mathieu Almaric). The fact that this time around the duo were supported by the likes of Jeanne Balibar, Denis Podalydes, Marion Cotillard and Chiara Mastroianni merely sweetened the pot but it has to be said that Desplechin doesn't make it easy. Almaric plays a University lecturer named Paul Dedaulus, a name surely not chosen at random. Daedalus, in Greek mythology was the father of Icarus, who flew too near the sun, but apart from that Daedalus was on straight commission from King Minos of Crete for whom he created among other things, the maze and the Minotaur in the centre of it. I'm betting twelve to seven that Desplechin had that very same maze in mind when he dreamed up this labyrinthine storyline of a man who is constantly taking wrong turnings in his attempt to move forward in his life. As a vacillator this guy can leave Hamlet dead in the water; should he stay with Devos - with whom he has been in an on/off relationship for ten years - or should he attempt to make and/or get a firm commitment from one of the three other girls with whom he is involved. At the end of three hours your guess is as good as mine but it is also fair to say that along the way we have been treated to some very fine acting indeed though whether it has any point is moot. Those, like me, who enjoy watching French actors - without question some of the finest in the world - in their early careers will find this enthralling for that reason alone. Those will little or no interest in French actors, fine or otherwise, may well be bemused, bored or both.

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9 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
I think every graduate student must see this movie., 5 June 2003
10/10
Author: kes202

This movie is hillarious, especially to those who might be taking a good number of years to finish their dissertations. Endless hateful characters, endless fun! Both my fiance (whose favourite movies include Dumb and Dumber and Trains, Planes and Automobiles) and I (a Gone with the Wind and Dr. Zhivago type) managed to find much to laugh about here!

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7 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
An amazing film that discusses philosophical issues of mating rituals., 1 October 1998
Author: dan-120 from San Francisco

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.

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6 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
A funny, intelligent film full of weird looking attractive french people..., 31 August 2006
8/10
Author: El_Fireos from United Kingdom

I can understand why a lot of people will find this film boring. It's one of the most dialogue heavy films you'll ever see and the sporadic voice-over gives us so many complex and philosophical insights into the characters that it is quite hard to digest.

Having said that, I think this a fantastic film. It is very insightful, drole and poignant- for those who've ever been in any kind of relationship (or better yet, several, simultaneously). The narrative has a funny way of leaping around at times, but generally returns to Paul- whose daily struggles with his relationships to his friends, students and fellow academics cause him a lot of grief and awkward situations. The whole film is beautifully acted, and at times the dialogue soars from scene to scene with studied eloquence. The music is also used to dramatic effect, rendering the small interior changes and developments in the characters into the life changing moments of which they are worthy. I say get this film, some cigarettes, a couple of bottles of wine and a comfy seat. You're in for a treat.

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8 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
The French cinema in decline, 9 April 2002
5/10
Author: John Simpson (jandesimpson@btinternet.com) from Hastings, U.K.

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.

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4 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Dull and duller, 8 July 2008
Author: french enthusiast from Australia

Sorry, I didn't really read the other comment because frankly it was just too wordy for me, and it didn't really explain anything or answer any questions.

So I'll keep it brief...

I (having lived in France and studied French for many years) also love French cinema and French actors, but I was one of the above aforementioned "bored" viewers. So it isn't just anti-intellectuals who would be willing this film to end. We all know French films can be slow-paced but this is just ridiculous.

My advice, steer clear. There are much better ways to spend 170 or so minutes of your life. Watching paint dry perhaps.

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7 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
The best French film of the decade, 30 August 1999
10/10
Author: BigCombo from L.A.

It's the best French film of the decade and perhaps one of the greatest investigations into young love ever made. Mathieu Amalric is a revelation and demonstrates he's one of the finest young actors in the entire world. I love this film, and it makes me so happy to know it exists.

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10 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
...like a hole in the head., 7 June 2000
1/10
Author: Darragh O' Donoghue (hitch1899_@hotmail.com) from dublin, ireland

James Joyce may have been the greatest writer of the 20th century, but his altar-ego, Stephen Dedalus, is one of literature's great bores, a self-regarding intellectual who gets so lost in a swamp of second-hand ideas he does not know how to live life, and where one line will do, will speak reams of dense, circular, allusive cant.

Ditto his namesake Paul in this film, with whom we have the privilege of spending three hours, as he talks, makes a mess of his life, talks, makes a mess of his career, talks, makes a mess of his relationships, and talks. 173 minutes. Like Stephen, his problems with writing are linked to his problems with sex. This is a key film of the Young French Cinema, which favours the flat filming of dozens of bright charmless young things drinking coffee and talking about Wittgenstein. Great.

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7 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
it took almost 3 hours to get to the point, 20 November 2001
4/10
Author: tarouche from manila, philippines

don't get me wrong, the film had its moments. it had an interesting premise, and engaging characters who had a lot of memorable lines.

what it lacked was cohesion. it had waaayyyy too many sub-plots which i believe were not necessary for the film to make its point.

somebody should have taken a pair of scissors to it.

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