My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument

A very good film, but the resemblance to the films of Rohmer is a constant reminder of the sensitivity and confidence with which Rohmer understands and depicts human relations. It is as though this film were therefore an expression of a loss of human understanding (for both the director and his characters) which has taken place in the gap between Rohmer's generation and that of Desplechin, testament to what Bernard Stiegler calls the loss of savoir vivre.

desplechin is my baumbach.

Estreava há 25 anos na França. Paul Dedalus está para Desplechin como Antoine Doinel está para Truffaut, aliás, me pergunto se esse nome de Dedalus não é por outro alter ego famoso do século XX: James Joyce. Em todo caso é um filme muito bom que só peca por sua duração, posso tranquilamente assistir um filme contemplativo de três horas, mas sempre peno com os verborrágicos da mesma duração, não sou do tipo que aguenta gente falando por três horas na minha cabeça. DVDRip MKO.

Very disappointed that the Virgin Mary's ovulation cycle in relation to incarnation didn't get a more in-depth discussion! Oh well, how much can you possibly fit in 3 hours when you're too busy failing at developing characters and their relationships?

It was fine when Rohmer was doing this kind of movie, but after a while, these navel-gazing intellectuals in their late twenties get tiring and annoying. They try to redeem themselves from their character flaws by rationalizing and intellectualizing them, but they fail utterly at it. The difficulty of human life and human communication cannot serve as an excuse for overt douchebaggery.

Interminable tale of philosophizing and philandering late 20s adults. The characters are so empty that watching it quickly becomes a chore. Only saved at all by the cast.

Feels like the missing link between Rohmer and Baumbach? Not quite as stylish as later Desplechin (i.e. less Truffaut-indebted) although it does retain a self-consciously novelistic, literary flair via omnipresent narrator and a sprawling, episodic narrative. That said, it spends more time with a single protagonist rather than exploring his complex interconnected relationships with as much depth as is in Kings and Queen, so the lengthy running time perhaps feels slightly less justified?