I can understand why a lot of people will find this film boring. It's one of the most dialogue heavy films you'll ever see and the sporadic voice-over gives us so many complex and philosophical insights into the characters that it is quite hard to digest.

Having said that, I think this a fantastic film. It is very insightful, drole and poignant- for those who've ever been in any kind of relationship (or better yet, several, simultaneously). The narrative has a funny way of leaping around at times, but generally returns to Paul- whose daily struggles with his relationships to his friends, students and fellow academics cause him a lot of grief and awkward situations. The whole film is beautifully acted, and at times the dialogue soars from scene to scene with studied eloquence. The music is also used to dramatic effect, rendering the small interior changes and developments in the characters into the life changing moments of which they are worthy. I say get this film, some cigarettes, a couple of bottles of wine and a comfy seat. You're in for a treat.

It's a pretty long movie, but I'm so entertained by everything in it that I don't give a damn if it all falls neatly into a precise trajectory. My first viewing had me grinning in sheer pleasure. Now, having bought the video, I sometimes start and stop it at random places, and always am immediately engaged wherever I happen to dive in.

The film is not at all linear, but elaborates on a situation: Paul, having made a promising start as a philosophy prodigy, has become frozen, only to watch his friends all become successful. His love life is similarly suspended: he can neither be with his girlfriend of ten years nor let her go, while engaging in clandestine affairs with women who either torture him or are unavailable. The movie consists of all the permutations of romance and sex and humiliation and mistakes he goes through as he squirms his way back into life again. Now, I don't know if this sounds fun or not, but what's wonderful about it is, first of all, that it's very funny, and second, that it's so real.

Love and sex are presented as they happen in real life - nothing neat and clean, but a chaos made of moments of fascination an passion and searching and confusion made by two (or more) people whose lives are deep waters. Everything here is instantly recognizable and completely unpredictable. Candid, sexy...

James Joyce may have been the greatest writer of the 20th century, but his altar-ego, Stephen Dedalus, is one of literature's great bores, a self-regarding intellectual who gets so lost in a swamp of second-hand ideas he does not know how to live life, and where one line will do, will speak reams of dense, circular, allusive cant.

Ditto his namesake Paul in this film, with whom we have the privilege of spending three hours, as he talks, makes a mess of his life, talks, makes a mess of his career, talks, makes a mess of his relationships, and talks. 173 minutes. Like Stephen, his problems with writing are linked to his problems with sex. This is a key film of the Young French Cinema, which favours the flat filming of dozens of bright charmless young things drinking coffee and talking about Wittgenstein. Great.