Leofwine_draca
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.
euroGary
'Sexual Chronicles of a French Family', to give it its English-language title, pretty much does what it says on the tin! Members of a French family - including granddad - have sex. It all kicks off when the youngest son is suspended from school for masturbating in class, and while he mopes around the house his parents have sex, his sister has sex (with her boyfriend, often al fresco), his older brother has sex (as part of a threesome) and his grandfather has sex (with his long-term prostitute, who becomes a friend of the family). There's not much of a plot; just a lot of talk, and sex. Thankfully most of the sex scenes are between people whom you actually want to see naked (father and grandfather excepted - sorry chaps!) and it is interesting that although the older brother eventually decides he is homosexual, there's no explicit man-on-man action to match the heterosexual sex scenes, even in the two-men, one-woman threesome scenes.The version of this I saw at the 2012 Edinburgh Film Festival shied away from full-frontal shots, but it's erections galore in the German cut ('Frankreich Privat Die Sexuellen Geheimnisse einer Familie', in case anyone feels like hitting Amazon.de!)
Suppiluliomas
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?
jfrentzen-942-204211
The leisurely comedy-drama follows teenage Romain, the youngest in a family whose members and various boyfriends and girlfriends more or less freely discuss their sex lives, with some interesting boundaries. Romain, the virgin of the group, laments his condition but with encouragement and validation from his father becomes confident enough to go to bed with his love interest, Coralie. The movie chronicles the dynamics of the couples with a lighthearted, unpretentious approach. As Romain, Mathias Melloul conveys just the right combination of reluctance and assertiveness, and actors playing the father and grandfather are genuinely low-key and charming. Only the mother and older brother come off as superficial, no fault of the players. It's due to a scenario that is too thin to add or sustain much depth or insight. The hardcore sex scenes that at times limit the drama are shot artlessly, although the penultimate scene between the two young leads nicely illustrates the tentative awkwardness of first love. The movie is not a documentary.
AD
