The Pornographer

Bertrand Bonello's grimly histrionic, richly symbolic, yet somewhat on-the-nose melodrama, from 2001, which looks at the human wreckage left by the burst illusions of France's generation of May, 1968.

I spent the first 30 minutes or so genuinely unsure about whether this film thought itself funny, willing it to favour knowing self-mockery, disappointed but not surprised when it plumped for high pretentiousness.

The Pornographer does to its theme precisely what pornography does to sex -- it isolates specific parts while ignoring the bigger picture and the larger meaning.

A cool, thoughtful character study, in which pornography can be read as a metaphor for the practice of film-making.

The scenes in which the porno films are being made stand out, but with a 108 minute sit and an awkward narrative it isn't even salvaged by calling it French cinema.

You wouldn't want to spend a mere 15 minutes with porn filmmaker Jacques Laurent ... and The Pornographer runs 106.

not just a study of how porn has degenerated from adult-oriented love stories to rank perversion, it's also a film about how the movies themselves have changed

Only fans of the most pretentious, dull French cinema will even remotely like this film.

The theme of silent passivity runs throughout the film, so Bonello must have wanted to make some kind of statement with it. The effect is merely alienating.