This is a sexy film with little sex, at least not until very late in the screenplay when we are all too tired to even yawn. This is when the film’s protagonists decide to do a threesome with an old college friend of the wife.
The friend, a stunning beauty almost mesmeric in her impact, was so at odds with the rest of the film’s mediocrity that I wondered if she belonged to another film altogether and had walked into this one my mistake. At least, that’s the feeling I got. Poor Holly deserves better. So do we.
But this comes much later. At first, there is just Noel and Audrey played with a distracting apathy by Josh Lawson and Nathalie Emmanuel. Their marriage, we gather, has arrived at a stage of stagnancy and the only excitement Josh feels is when his neighour/best friend Peter(played with lip-smacking cheesiness by Ron Livingston) describes his bedroom escapades with his wife to Josh. Peter’s lurid descriptions are flush with bodily fluids and their rebellious discharge.
I suspect Peter just makes up these fluid fantasies to ensure he gets Josh’s attention. Josh, poor chap, finds his attention straying from his wife when the beauteous Holly comes to visit. Nathalie Emmanuel(seen in Game Of Thrones) is the only saving grace of this all-talk-no-action bore in which the actors try to act involved with the ridiculous problems of their characters. But end up looking unimpressed.
With little to hold on to, the actors look more lost than lustful. Until Holly’s arrival, the film hobbles along with painful self-awareness trying to look avante garde. After Holly arrives the going gets even tougher for the screenplay as it tries to convince itself about the ménage a trois while Noel tries to convince his wife and her erstwhile bestfriend why they should get together in bed.
The threesome’s sex scene will have you rolling on the floor in embarrassed laughter. No body part shown as the three players entwine limbs and act and sexed –up. This is ‘R’ rated stuff pounded down to a Disney wholesomeness. It is highly unconvincing and seriously ill-paced. After viewing this sanitized sex comedy where there is no sex, only people talking about it, I just wished Holly hadn’t slept over.
Image source: Amazon.com