Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

cactuscapital We pray the United States Supreme Court is soon peopled by non-Puritans who will believe the First Amendment guarantees Americans the right to produce and watch what pleases them. The current federal court system is full of Reagan-era morons who do not believe we as a people have enough sense to decide for ourselves what we see on television and at the movies.Having lived through the cultural revolution of the 1960's, I would have hoped to see by now more open minds on the bench and in the federal Executive Branch. Instead, we have had the same draconian moral arbiters we've had since the 1950's. For instance, instead of moving forward toward freedom from censorship, we have to deal with the likes of Bush's Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell (son of "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons" Colin Powell), whose obsession with Janet Jackson's breast drove him to seek higher FCC fines to punish radio and television stations and networks who have the temerity to broadcast words and images which violate his poor Baptist ears.

FilmCriticLalitRao Le Pornographe can be termed as a decent film directed by Bertrand Bonello as it does not shock any viewer who has self conceived notions about the film's title.It is one of those typical French films in which characters ramble on various life affirming themes.This is the reason why the film's title is an absolutely inappropriate misnomer as the word "Le Pornographe" does not do much justice to this film's central themes.Bertrand Bonello has made effective use of his film's principal character,a famous French director of pornographic films Jacques Laurent to conduct an observational study about various human relationships which include a troubled father son relationship,a pallid husband wife relationship.These relationships are so strongly portrayed that the topic as well as scant depiction of pornography is easily sidelined.Although this film features some famous porn stars like HPG,Ovidie etc,it is through actors like Jean Pierre Léaud, Jérémie Renier,Catherine Mouchet and Dominique Blanc that Bertrand Bonello is able to lead his film to its inscrutable conclusion.

Robert J. Maxwell As I read it, this rambling film is a case study of declining potency. Jean-Pierre Leaud is surprisingly unprepossessing as a dumpy, long-haired director who's made a couple of well-received skin flicks with titles like, "I'm Hard, I Come, I Sing," but has had -- well -- director's block since 1984. It's a sad tale. And you feel sorry for the actor right away, if you remember Leaud in Truffaut's earlier films or in "Belle de Jour," a dark and sometimes menacing vibrant presence.Felt sorry for his character as well. The film makes it clear that sex is like power is like life. Leaud's 1968-style political activism is now obsolete. The new activism opposes a government that treats us "like a statistic." Its ultimate response is elective mutism, so Leaud winds up communicating with his son by reading his notes instead of having a conversation.We can see Leaud's power -- his vision, if you will -- being taken away from him. He's directing a scene in which a fake chauffeur is seduced by a 16-year-old heiress. (I think I'm getting this right. It was a little confusing.) He lays out his plan for the rest of the crew. As usual, the cameras will stay perfectly still while filming this sexual encounter. One camera for closeups of organs and faces, the other for a medium shot. The actress will not emote while the chauffeur does her. No phony moaning or wild gyrations. Leaud, the director, will take care of that part for her. Finally, he wants her to, well, swallow as she might offscreen. Those are his directorial intentions.Just before shooting starts, the Assistant Director plays some romantic music, thinking it may help the scene. "No music," says Leaud politely but firmly.The scene begins the way Leaud wants it. But Leaud is staring at the floor. The AD asks, "Aren't you going to direct it?" Leaud replies: "I've already directed it." But not to the AD's satisfaction. First the AD begins prompting the actress -- "Louder. We can't hear you." Then, little by little, the AD takes over the scene. He instructs the actress to shout and move around more. He plays the forbidden romantic music. He moves the cameras around. And the actress gets a cliché right in the face.What might have been a more or less personal scene has been turned into something that the industry grinds out like Wendy's Whoppers. And all this time, Leaud has been moping in his chair, without a whimper of protest.That scene summed it up for me in many ways. Other scenes got by my interpretive apparatus entirely. I don't know what's going on when Leaud leaves his wife. I have no idea why Leaud asks permission to build a house on a friend's land and then, after laying out a sketchy floor plan of a tiny shed, simply sits there staring at it for scene after scene. Is it "symbolic"? If so, the symbolism whizzed past me without doing any damage and went on its way. I think I DID get symbolism elsewhere. When Leaud's son and his girlfriend make love in a meadow, we don't see them "doing it" but we get a lot of shots of sheep running around all woolly and sweaty looking. Very mammalian stuff.Is the movie worth watching? Probably. Nice photography, good acting. Definitely, if you're a 50-year-old and your vision is increasingly impaired by senile cataracts.

Claudio Carvalho Jacques (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is the son of a doctor, born in 1950, who had dedicated his life from 1970 to 1984 to pornographic movies. His wife committed suicide when his son Joseph (Jérémie Rénier) was five, and when he was a teenager, he became aware of the profession of his father and left home. Presently Jacques is broken and has decided to accept the invitation to direct porno movies again. Meanwhile his son, now seventeen years old, decides to approach to him. This film is so pretentious and boring that irritated me. The story is quite ridiculous, and the antagonistic philosophic behavior of Jacques is funny. A guy who dedicated his life (since twenty years old) to pornography, in the beginning just because he wanted to attract girls for having sex, worked along fourteen years with sex, is not to have an existential middle-age crisis like showed in the plot of this movie. I do not like porno movies and I am not a moralist person, but if I have to see explicit sex, at least lets see with beautiful actresses in erotic situation. I do not know the name of the 'actress' in the explicit scene, but she will certainly be marked for the rest of her career. I do not understand how such a crap was awarded in Cannes. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): 'O Pornógrafo' ('The Pornographer')