Ma Vie Sexuelle Details

Arnaud Desplechin directs with a genuine curiosity about his characters that is too rare in present-day cinema, but this leisurely study of Parisian twentysomething angst struggles to justify its three-hour running time. As the wannabe intellectual trapped in a dead-end teaching post, Mathieu Amalric deserves credit for creating such an introspective loser. However, his relationships with neglected girlfriend Emmanuelle Devos, unhinged student Marianne Denicourt and his cousin's lover, Chiara Mastroianni, only occasionally flicker into life. With some judicious cutting and a touch more self-deprecation, this might have achieved the intimacy its epic scale disallows.

Complex and talkative disquisition on love, responsibility and the pleasures and pains of adultery; its tone is intellectual but not solemn: one character has a religious revelation while a girl dances in her underwear, while another says, 'I think I'm in