My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument (1996)

Original title

Comment je me suis disputé… (ma vie sexuelle)

Directed by

Arnaud Desplechin

Genre

drama film

Country

France

Runtime

2h 58m

Rated

15+

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 61 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A philosophy student and lecturer named Paul Dédalus drifts through relationships and arguments with his longtime girlfriend, two mistresses who are involved with his friends, and a new colleague who dislikes him. His brother's religious conversion adds another layer to his personal and professional conflicts.

talkativeintrospectivelanguidmelancholicromanticneuroticslice-of-lifeconversational

What happens

My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument (French: Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle)) is a 1996 French drama film directed by Arnaud Desplechin. It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. It won the César Award for Most Promising Actor (Mathieu Amalric) and was also nominated for Most Promising Actress (Emmanuelle Devos and Jeanne Balibar). The film ensured Desplechin's and Amalric's career launches in the 90s as respected director and actor respectively (although they had both initially worked towards the reverse). Historically, it also marks one of Marion Cotillard's very first roles in the industry. My Sex Life... follows the story of a PhD student and lecturer in philosophy, Paul Dédalus, as he struggles to break up with his longtime girlfriend, has conflicted feelings about his two mistresses - who are also his friends' partners -, and has a difficult time facing a new colleague, appointed head of the "epistemology department", a former friend who dislikes him for reasons Paul cannot remember. The Catholic conversion and religious concerns of Paul's younger brother, Ivan, are a subplot in the movie. Being nearly three hours long, the movie's representation of a daily life in Paris follows a similar pattern to Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore from 1973, a cult post-French New Wave film lasting three hours and forty minutes. Similar dialogues and epigrammatic lines or quotations on life, love and friendship are found in both works. Maurice Pialat's interest for "realistic" circumstances has been cited by Desplechin as a major influence on his work in general. Other versions of the Paul Dédalus character appear in A Christmas Tale (2008), My Golden Days (2015) and Filmlovers! (2024). These later productions also feature Amalric. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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