My Sex Life... Or How I Got Into an Argument (1996)

Note that in the original French title, How I Got Into an Argument comes prior to My Sex Life. Sure, there's a goodly amount of sex here, but there's more talk (about sex and otherwise). The dialogue comes in avalanches of words and phrases, and while much of it is interesting and clever, it gets to be wearying over the course of three hours. This is a film from Arnaud Desplechin, the director of Esther Kahn, and it trades in some of the same themes that mark the latter film (particularly emotional detachment and the process of learning to engage with the world vs. the lure of solipsism), but this film's not nearly as successful. There are flashes of brilliance scattered through the immense whole like blueberries in a muffin, but around the two-hour mark one begins to wonder whether this trifle is worth all the bother.

Grade: C+