The first thing that strikes at the 1996 film directed by Arnaud Desplechin is the title: 'Comment je me suis dispute ... (ma vie sexuelle)' (or in English 'My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument). It is a title almost as impossible as that of Radu Jude's latest film that received the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, a title that wants to state even before the screening begins that the viewer will have a cinematic experience that is from the usual patterns. The second thing those who read the film sheet notice is the duration: three hours minus two minutes. Today it has become more common for films to last at least two hours, and productions lasting about two and a half hours are not uncommon either, but in the previous century, even in its last decade, such a duration was mainly reserved for the genre of the historical saga, and the screening was divided into two series. This is not the case with 'Comment ....' (you'll excuse my abbreviation, I hope) which is a unitary cinematic work and which is in fact a comic drama contemporary to the period in which the film was made, having as heroes a group of French intellectuals in their 30s, their bonds of friendship and love, conflicts, love affairs and separations. On one hand it is a complex film because of the fabric of intrigue and the evolution of the characters, on the other hand it is a surprisingly simple film if we analyze carefully what is actually happening on the screen.
I guess that one of the inspirational models of the screenwriter and director were those films of Woody Allen that take place in the intellectual circles of the northeast coast of the United States. We follow a group of friends, mostly students or in the first years after graduation, who seem to live in a kind of sentimental commune, sharing their adventures and almost casually freely swapping partners. When things take a more serious turn, psychoanalysis and its variants appear. The off-screen commentary is copiously used, sometimes in the 3rd person in Nouvelle Vague style, other times in the 1st person, as if made from the patient's couch. The main hero is Paul Dedalus (Mathieu Almaric), professor of literature and doctoral student at a prestigious university, whom we will see separating from Esther (Emmanuelle Devos), his mistress on-off for ten years, entering a risky adventure with the unstable and sometimes violent Valerie (Jeanne Balibar), and dreaming of Sylvia (Marianne Denicourt) who is the mistress of his best friend, Nathan (Emmanuel Salinger). His professional life is capped, with a doctoral thesis whose completion seems to last an eternity, and to make things worse, a former friend and now rival, in fact a nullity with pretensions, gets a better position as an associate professor in the same faculty. Achieving his aspiration to follow the intellectual path that attracts him and to write literary criticism involves giving up his academic career. The ending is not too different from the beginning. A few years passed from the life of the heroes and three hours from that of the spectators.
The film alternates dialogues between the young people with scenes from intimacy, plus flashbacks that clarify the biographies and paths of the heroes in previous years. The verbosity is intense and a bit lacking in depth, with dialogues that mostly take place at restaurants, parties or in bed, with diary pages and letters sent and not sent, with testimonials in video-documentary style. Arnaud Desplechin manages to create some anthological scenes when he goes to extremes emphasising the comic or emotional elements (with the help of the excellent Emmanuelle Devos). The whole team of actors is remarkable, and we can say that this is the film of a generation of young French intellectuals played by a representative selection of a generation of young French actors. The lead role belongs to Matthieu Amalric, for whom 'Comment ...' was the first film in which he was cast in a consistent role. The interpretation is remarkable. Paul Dedalus seems to be a late teenager who refuses to mature sentimentally but also to abandon his ideals, and his family name can be considered an allusion to the sentimental and professional labyrinth, full of wrong paths and attempts to come to light in which his life takes place. The detached approach and the alternating counterpoint of the intellectual, sentimental and comic scenes make the film enjoyable to watch and attenuates the effort of the three hours of viewing. Would the movie have been better if it had lasted an hour less? We will never know, but we would have certainly missed the opportunity to discuss this topic.
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