SEXUAL CHRONICLES OF A FRENCH FAMILY (2012)

SEXUAL CHRONICLES OF A FRENCH FAMILY is a French language drama following the emotional and sexual mores and proclivities of three generations of the same family. It was classified 18 for frequent scenes of strong sex.

The film opens with a scene set in a school science laboratory in which a boy and a girl masturbate themselves in front of their classmates while filming their actions on their mobile phones. The scene contains a brief but explicit shot of the girl's pudenda as she strokes herself under her skirt. Although the detail is explicit, it is brief and justified by context in that the film goes on to examine the reasons behind this behaviour and the attempts by the family's matriarch to get her children to open up about their sexual desires and experiences. The actress in question was over 18 at the time of filming so there is no issue under the terms of the Protection of Children Act 1978.

The film also contains a number of other strong sexual scenes, although none of them feature the kind of explicit detail seen in the opening sequence. The audience follows the elderly Grandfather character as he makes his twice weekly visits to a prostitute; the matriarch character and her husband are shown to still have a full sex life, although both are feeling their age; the older two children have varied sex lives, with the oldest boy enjoying a bisexual lifestyle; the youngest boy, who is caught masturbating in school at the start of the film, is a virgin and much of the narrative follows his tentative first steps towards adulthood as he loses his virginity to the girl who had been masturbating with him. Meanwhile, the growing frankness of the verbal exchanges between all the protagonists seems to bring the family closer together.

In addition to the strong sex there is some brief drug use when some of the younger characters are seen enjoying a joint. Drug use is never a focus of the narrative and the film neither promotes nor endorses drug use. There is some strong language ('f***') and one use of very strong language when the word 'c***' is used in a sexually descriptive manner rather than as an insult.

No-one younger than 18 may see an 18 rated film in the cinema. No-one younger that 18 may rent or buy an 18 rated video or DVD.