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mrfish67 wrote on 10/12/2012:

If you are buying this version of the movie hoping for the explicit content, you will be disappointed.

I had watched this title via instant video streaming in the summer of 2012; that version, as well as this version on DVD, is only 79 minutes. The 79-minute version does not include the explicit, unsimulated sexual content. Another review here even states that "the sex scenes are simulated yet realistic" and it is clear that this viewer saw the milder version as well.

Currently (10/12/2012), the explicit 82-minute version is only available on DVD in Germany. In France, this movie will be available on 11/20/12 in both DVD and Blu-ray formats, but currently the versions on sale there are only the milder 79-minute version.

Amos Lassen wrote on 08/14/2012:

When the youngest son, Romain, in a contemporary French family is caught doing something at school, the family must get over its reluctance to talk about sex and face things as they are. The parents, the children and the grandfather have to confront the topic that they have refused to discuss for years and what we see is a sweet and intimate look at what they learn when taboos are lifted. Jean-Marc Barr and Pascal Arnold try to investigate the importance of sex by using a middle-class French family to show the importance that sex plays in our lives.

Romain (Mathias Melloul) is distressed because everyone but him seems to be having sex. He is 18 and has his heart set on Coralie (Adeline Rebeillard), a beauty but he is having issues that he is still a virgin. His older brother has sex all the time and with several different people (sometimes all at the same time). His adopted sister is in a sexual relationship with her boyfriend; his parents, even though they have been married for twenty-five years, are experimenting sexually and even his grandfather sees a prostitute twice a month. When Romain is caught masturbating at school, a family discussion is held and surprisingly, Romain’s mother, Claire (Valerie Maes) begins to become interested in the sex lives of the members of the family.

From that description, we would hardly expect the film to be so charming. There are several quite explicit scenes and it could easily have been turned into a real sleaze fest but it is a comedy with a lot of heart.

It seems to me that the point of the film is to break down the taboos that surround sex so that people will speak about it more openly— that society will be healthier if sex becomes talked about on a daily basis. The film deals with sex in a straight-forward and open manner and we should do the same.

When Romain is caught masturbating during biology class, his suspension from school inadvertently sparks a new sexual openness in his family life. When mother Claire (Valérie Maës) resolves to take a greater interest in the sex lives of her children: adopted daughter Marie (Leïla Denio), eldest son Pierre (Nathan Duval) and reluctant virgin Romain, along with her husband Hervé’s (Stephan Hersoen) widower father (Yan Brian), she hopes to bring her family closer together and knock down the boundaries that have formed between them over recent years.

The film quickly overcomes any initial shock value in the hope of de-sensitizing their audience to the apparent taboo of sexuality in cinema. From this point on, nothing is off-limits or under-represented as the film touches on first times, ménages-a-trois, prostitution and sex between the elderly with an honesty and matter-of-factness that challenges conventional controversy. While the sex scenes are simulated yet realistic, they seem to be trivial. The cast holds nothing back and when the actors are participating in sex, the movie moves. However, when those scenes are over, the directors seem to be at something of a loss as to what to do next.

Melloul is excellent as Romain whose frustrating tend to endear him to the audience. However, the problem that I think we have here is that in 2012 with so much openness about everything, there is really little here that seems new. Therefore the triviality here lies in the sex scenes because most of us have seen it all before and more brazenly than we have here. In fact, the film makes sex look tedious. It is almost as if the plot is kept thin so we can get to the sex scenes. Perhaps if we had the chance to get to know the characters better, we would react differently and as I said earlier, the movie is sweet and has charm but could have been sweeter and had so much more charm.