La vie sexuelle des Belges 1950-1978

This film starts as a rapid-fire series of childhood memories, narrated by the main char. These episodes all have a sexual flavour. My favourite is the beautiful aunt who never wears knickers and parades around in the nude in front of the young boy, who concentrates only on his painting. But it goes downhill fast after that. The story completely loses focus, and is a lot less sexy. Disappointing, after such a promising start.

First movie of the belgian conceptual artist and disrespectful director Jan Bucquoy. This film starts the series of the sexual life of the belgians, composed by 4 full-lenght films that introduce subversion in belgian cinema history, also whit an independent production system. You'll not find any explicit sexual sequence, you'll find the representation of a complex ideological system, the history of a non conventional life, the alternative vision of a country that hide aspirations of general revolution of life. Bucquoy build a conceptual cinema that try to destroy the "representation" of the spectacular cinema in order to leave all the place to the ideas. The word "sexual" hides the words "politics","art", "desire", "communication"... it hides all words to reveal the language free by all social deviation. This first movie show 28 years of the life of a man who try to find the best answer to the only really important philosophical question, as the french writer Camus wrote: is it worth living life or not? From his little village in Flandre to Bruxelles, trough sexual relationships, political activism, literature dreams, you will see the existential journey of Jan Bucquoy (the name of the protagonist) who try to grow in the body and in the intellect.

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.

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.

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.