This is really a nice story, very true as my own experience, I believe anyone who ever been to that state or close to, things might go so tragic like that, The film is a truly reminder for all of us ---don't ever be that way when you fall in love, the ending could be whole lot different and you can get more than what it could offer. Self loving is always the infinity, the forever lesson for all of us to learn and stand on foot with it this life. We fall, then we grow. Brigitte Rouan is really a talent, she deserves more recognition than this film did. Great work as a female director, we need more of them like she is. Working on a project that might call her soul and she did it faithfully.
10 Reviews
Woman in Love and Desire
claudio_carvalho11 April 2010
In Paris, the successful forty and something year old book editor Diane Clovier (Brigitte Roüan) is married with the lawyer Philippe Clovier (Patrick Chesnais) and they have teenage son and daughter. Diane meets the young engineer Emilio (Boris Terral) that is the roommate of the writer François Narou (Nils Tavernier) that is working with her, and they have an intense love affair. Meanwhile, Philippe is defending their neighbor that has killed her unfaithful husband sticking a fork in his neck and one day he overhears a phone conversation of Diane and her lover. When Emilio ends their affair, Diane gets deeply depressed missing her juvenile love, neglecting her husband and children that leave her. Meanwhile, the novel of François is published and he tries to help his self-indulgent editor to recover her emotional balance and self-esteem.
"Post Coïtum Animal Triste" is a dramatic romance about a woman in love and desire for a younger man. This film has a great performance of the director / actress Brigitte Roüan but the running time of 97 minutes is too long and the deserved a shorter edition. The situation of Diane, totally neglecting her son and her daughter, is unusual for a mother and I found her an unlikable character. The open conclusion is not clear and I do not know whether the intention of the author is to tell that Diane superseded her situation with her rebirth. I watched this movie on a VHS released by Cult Filmes distributor. My vote is five.
Title (Brazil): "Post Coïtum Animal Triste" ("Post Coitum Sad Animal")
"Post Coïtum Animal Triste" is a dramatic romance about a woman in love and desire for a younger man. This film has a great performance of the director / actress Brigitte Roüan but the running time of 97 minutes is too long and the deserved a shorter edition. The situation of Diane, totally neglecting her son and her daughter, is unusual for a mother and I found her an unlikable character. The open conclusion is not clear and I do not know whether the intention of the author is to tell that Diane superseded her situation with her rebirth. I watched this movie on a VHS released by Cult Filmes distributor. My vote is five.
Title (Brazil): "Post Coïtum Animal Triste" ("Post Coitum Sad Animal")
Disappointingly mediocre
=G=7 April 2001
"After Sex" tells of a comfortably successful middle aged professional women with a family who has an affair with a man 20 years her junior and goes into deep depression when he leaves. A very ordinary film in all respects, "After Sex" does not do justice to the story and mixes humor with drama schizophrenically rather than synergistically. Though the film does have its moments and is not completely devoid of appeal, it's not worth all the subtitle reading.
It is an intense, emotional movie about the end of an affair from a woman's point of view.
vraskin1 April 2000
It is a typical European movie and a typical woman's movie. If you happen to like both, as I do, you will find it quite captivating and well made. There is not much action per se though quite a few nude sex scenes, done quite tastefully and not pruriently. The acting is good, the cinematography is average European, which is also good. There is some suspense. It is definitely not the best movie my wife and I have ever watched but we did not grudge the time and only once or twice felt like fast forwarding but the very next frame changed our minds.
appallingly self-indulgent portrait of female sexuality
gans13 April 2001
Two scenes illustrate the subtlety and sophistication of this film. In the opening sequence, the image of a cat in heat is followed by that of the heroine-director writhing in the throes of a self-administered orgasm. In a contrasting scene, following some clothes-ripping sex, we see our heroine crossing the street *floating on a little cloud*.
Rather than a portrait of uncontrollable "animal" passion, this film has the feel of a manifesto: you men think you can portray female sexuality, *I* know what it's really like. But there is no genuine sensuality here, only hysterical febrility. After the sensitive portrayals of _Outremer_, rooted in historical reality, the creation of this empty cat-woman and her so-predictable stud is most disappointing. Even the implausible secondary plot of an elderly woman who murders her husband is refreshing by comparison.
Rather than a portrait of uncontrollable "animal" passion, this film has the feel of a manifesto: you men think you can portray female sexuality, *I* know what it's really like. But there is no genuine sensuality here, only hysterical febrility. After the sensitive portrayals of _Outremer_, rooted in historical reality, the creation of this empty cat-woman and her so-predictable stud is most disappointing. Even the implausible secondary plot of an elderly woman who murders her husband is refreshing by comparison.
Even in French it's awful
mikec-728 February 1999
For people who worry that they might be giving this film short shrift because they might not have caught all the subtitles, stop worrying. In French it's just as bad. You could miss all the subtitles and not miss anything. And it's a shame because this is a film, made by a woman, about a middle aged, married with 2 kids woman, falling helplessly in love with a much younger man. So it's the reversal of the standard scenario. Unfortunately, there is nothing here to keep us interested for the length of the film. The acting, though, is excellent.
Love story with little fun and a lot of pain
IgorPak14 November 1998
This a story about a woman in love. Love is painful. And so is the movie...
The movie is bad in any reasonable sense, except maybe for the acting. If you are renting it with English subtitles, be prepared to miss about 50% of them. The photography is awful. The director tried to be pretentious, which made things worse. Let me tell you one thing about this movie:
If you didn't see it, keep it that way!
The movie is bad in any reasonable sense, except maybe for the acting. If you are renting it with English subtitles, be prepared to miss about 50% of them. The photography is awful. The director tried to be pretentious, which made things worse. Let me tell you one thing about this movie:
If you didn't see it, keep it that way!
Failed to hold my attention
smatysia22 July 2002
Maybe this would be a better movie if I spoke French. Although, actually I prefer subtitled movies to dubbed ones. The film wasn't awful, it just wasn't good. It bored me. I can point to no part or cast or crew that was any better or any worse than the whole. Don't waste your time. Grade: D-
At its best when it captures the feverish substance of her passion
allyjack8 October 1999
The movie is at its best when it just captures the feverish substance of her passion, which it does vividly and candidly with a striking lack of self-consciousness on Rouan's part. But in its specifics, particularly in how it sets up the various male reactions to her behavior, the movie often seems somewhat schematic and labored, if not tedious. Her husband is defending a woman who stabbed her husband in the neck because of his affair - as he practices and prepares for her defence he copes with his growing knowledge of Rouan's adultery, and in that process can't help but argue in mitigation of his own wife; the mechanism seems clunky, if only because high-profile murders are such overly familiar, convenient thematic vessels for one thing or the other. The inspiration she provides to her main writer (who names his book after her description of a man's sweat) is too easy an external validation rather than a riding of the waves she creates for herself. The scenes of her trashed state are too much decrepit chic. Not that the overall trajectory doesn't more or less work, but the film constantly seems to be battling its own limitations, the restrictions it places on its central turbulence. The ending certainly seemed to me a very melodramatic signaling of redemption.
Frustrated Pussy, Bemused Viewer
Philby-322 August 2002
Warning: Spoilers
SPOILER AHEAD.
The opening shot is of a female cat on heat, miaowing around the apartment floor of Diane(Brigitte Rouan) and her husband Phillipe (Patrick Chesnais. Puss appears again at the end, still on heat, her biological desire unfulfilled. Meantime Diane a book editor in her 40s, with a nice husband and two teen-age children, has an affair with dark and handsome Emilio (Boris Terral), an engineer engaged in international aid projects. Emilio happens to be sharing an apartment with Francisco (Nils Tavernier), an author whose his next novel Diane is trying to coax out of him. Emilio is in his twenties but likes older women. Phillipe is preoccupied with the defence of an elderly woman who has murdered her husband with a carving fork after 43 years of abuse.
I found this movie slow-moving; despite some neat cutting from one scene to another it seemed longer than its 95 minutes. There were one or two sexy bits, but nothing really to explain how Emilio the young stud feels apart from a casual remarks he makes to a friend ("four f*cks and she thinks I'm her future"). The inevitable break-up comes about an hour into the film and Diane does not take it well - in fact she nearly goes around the twist. Yet a trip to Corfu with her favourite author and a jump off Saffo's cliff (isn't that Lesbos?) restores her sanity. The last half-hour is pretty tedious.
I liked the humour in what was otherwise a fairly sorry tale and some of the minor characters had some charm eg Diane's pompous twit of a boss and Francois the author who seemed to be writing novels quite removed from his life experience ("virgin writes searing romance"). The trouble with Diane is, that while we understand why she has done what she has, and why she finds the break-up so hard, it is somehow difficult to feel sorry for her. It's hard to put a finger on why. Perhaps it's the self-obsession, the narcissism she displays. Perhaps the point is that anyone can get caught by an affair, but we don't all spend as much time looking into a mirror as Diane does. Anyway the cat can't help it, but she can.
We never get to find out what happens in the trial of the carving fork wife - all we see is Phillipe practising a jury speech which suggests she doesn't have much chance of an acquittal. I think we need closure on that one too, to round off the story. Do they all live happily ever after? At the end, I didn't really care. Maybe you have to be female (and smarter than the cat) to understand.
The opening shot is of a female cat on heat, miaowing around the apartment floor of Diane(Brigitte Rouan) and her husband Phillipe (Patrick Chesnais. Puss appears again at the end, still on heat, her biological desire unfulfilled. Meantime Diane a book editor in her 40s, with a nice husband and two teen-age children, has an affair with dark and handsome Emilio (Boris Terral), an engineer engaged in international aid projects. Emilio happens to be sharing an apartment with Francisco (Nils Tavernier), an author whose his next novel Diane is trying to coax out of him. Emilio is in his twenties but likes older women. Phillipe is preoccupied with the defence of an elderly woman who has murdered her husband with a carving fork after 43 years of abuse.
I found this movie slow-moving; despite some neat cutting from one scene to another it seemed longer than its 95 minutes. There were one or two sexy bits, but nothing really to explain how Emilio the young stud feels apart from a casual remarks he makes to a friend ("four f*cks and she thinks I'm her future"). The inevitable break-up comes about an hour into the film and Diane does not take it well - in fact she nearly goes around the twist. Yet a trip to Corfu with her favourite author and a jump off Saffo's cliff (isn't that Lesbos?) restores her sanity. The last half-hour is pretty tedious.
I liked the humour in what was otherwise a fairly sorry tale and some of the minor characters had some charm eg Diane's pompous twit of a boss and Francois the author who seemed to be writing novels quite removed from his life experience ("virgin writes searing romance"). The trouble with Diane is, that while we understand why she has done what she has, and why she finds the break-up so hard, it is somehow difficult to feel sorry for her. It's hard to put a finger on why. Perhaps it's the self-obsession, the narcissism she displays. Perhaps the point is that anyone can get caught by an affair, but we don't all spend as much time looking into a mirror as Diane does. Anyway the cat can't help it, but she can.
We never get to find out what happens in the trial of the carving fork wife - all we see is Phillipe practising a jury speech which suggests she doesn't have much chance of an acquittal. I think we need closure on that one too, to round off the story. Do they all live happily ever after? At the end, I didn't really care. Maybe you have to be female (and smarter than the cat) to understand.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
