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

Arnaud Desplechin's film runs close to three hours and follows a doctoral student approaching thirty. Paul Dedalus, played by Mathieu Amalric, cannot finish his thesis, cannot leave the girlfriend he has had for ten years, keeps starting things with other women, and converts his own indecision into theory. Everyone around him does the same: they talk, argue, explain, and settle nothing. The length is method rather than fault. Desplechin refuses to shorten scenes because his subject is not what happens but how people narrate it. The density of dialogue, the literary allusions and the way the characters treat their own lives as fiction set the film apart within nineties French cinema. It competed at Cannes in 1996. Amalric won the César for Most Promising Actor in 1997 for the role, and his career started there. Who it is for: viewers who enjoy talkative, literary, long-form French cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who will find three hours of people failing to decide anything exhausting.