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The Sexual Life of the Belgians
Jan Bucquoy narrates the story of his sexual life to age 28, imagining his conception (parents drunk, the encounter lasting ten seconds) and reporting his first orgasm (at the hands of Eddy, in a beach-side caravan, as they watch Laurel and Hardy), his comparative experiences with girls, and his move from Harelbeck to Brussels. There he meets Greta, bartender at a Bohemian cafe, who teaches him the Kama Sutra, the naked Esther, who reads him stories, and Thérèse, his wife for three years. They split after two children; he moves to a small flat, writes pornography to pay the bills, works sporadically on a novel, espouses anarchism, and meets more women. His self-confidence grows.
| Release : | 1994 |
| Rating : | 5.8 |
| Studio : | Transatlantic Films, |
| Crew : | Director, Writer, |
| Cast : | Jean-Henri Compère Michel Angély |
| Genre : | Comedy Romance |
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Reviews
As Good As It Gets
Absolutely Fantastic
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
This movie reminds me of Balzac, the little hero Lucien (here Jan) who starts at a remote village in the deep of Flanders and moves to the great Paris (Brussels). It is the astonishing encounter of the fourth kind with beautiful ladies and the fauna of the night crowd of a roaring city. Artists, whores, poets and all the like mix up in this beautiful expressed and imaged close up of the capital of the Belgians in the seventies. This movie has nothing to do about sex, it is just a romantic comedy of life. This movie remains actual by its surprising flair and capturing of mind and imaginative dialogs. In some Line it is difficult to translate this film. One of the best Belgian movies I ever saw, deserves a 9.
Before he made movies, Jan Bucquoy was a famous and controversial comic book writer. Based on Vidon and Bucquoy's original graphic novel "La vie sexuelle de JP Leureux, Tout va bien",this first feature is a touching mix of Cynicism and dead pan humor. The story revolves around the chronological thread of the various women of the narrator's life. Whereas the original comic book was built on a succession of many quick portraits and short cynical reappraisals, the film comes out as single ongoing framework, sarcastic, yet tainted with nostalgia. Overwhelmingly successful at indy film festivals around the world, its obscure and rather limited distribution seem to ad a certain cult value. You won't find the video tape at Blockbuster's, but it's out there...
When I saw the movie for the first time I was less enthusiastic than now.You have to see the movie at least two times,otherwise you think that it is a movie for idiots.Jean-Henri Compère is strong as a writer who explores the sexual life of the capital of Belgium and his indifference to his own fate is pathetic.His fatalism is in strong contrast to his will-power to become famous.Is this why as a young boy his sexual awakening came too late in his Flemish village?Or because his mother was opposing his career outside of the place where he had a rather happy youth?Marriage seems to be the turning point of his life,but it is not what he expected.Many Belgians have a divorce after being married for some years and he will not be the exception.The sexual life of the Belgians may be boring in itself,but in this movie you never have the impression that things do not go on.Every scene is a surprise and to this you can certainly add the beautiful images by Michel Baudour,and the music of Will Tura and Marc Aryan.
Road movie on the road of life in Belgium of the sixties. Cool! Dark comedy about a writer who wants to become world-famous by leaving his village and his family and going to Brussels. I like his conservative father who is regularly drunk and his aunt who proclaims a big future for him. His sexual initiation at a camping with the movies of Laurel and Hardy at the background is a bad start for him! The movie changes of tone in the second part and becomes more bitter. You can still laugh with the many sketches in which the main actor staggers between self-indulgence and self-critical spot. Splendid photography.
