MY AWKWARD SEXUAL ADVENTURE
Canada, 2012, 98 minutes, Colour.
Jonas Chernick, Emily Hampshire, Sarah Manninen, Vik Sahay, Melissa Marie Elias.
Directed by Sean Garrity.
While the story can be named as a sexual adventure, the word “awkward� in the title is key to the telling.
The film opens in Winnipeg, the focus on an accountant, very awkward in his manner, very limited in his experience. He is in a relationship with a girl he has known since they were 12. However, she considers him exceedingly boring and decides to break with him. He is presented as something of a nerd, not listening to people, finding it impossible to imagine that his girlfriend would break with him, continually arguing, phoning her, pleading with her.
He goes on holiday to Toronto and meets up with his friend, who has something of a promiscuous reputation but who has seemingly met the girl of his dreams, a rather demure young woman (though there is some disillusionment at the end of the film). The hero asks his friend to be his sexual mentor but he makes a mess of meeting people at a party, talking awkwardly, waiting for a phone call from his girlfriend. Wandering in the city, he goes into a strip bar, drinks, pays the girls for suggestive photos which he emails to his girlfriend – to no avail.
A kindly stripper takes him home and thus begins an offbeat relationship. Her finances are in a mess but he takes her to a bank, gets her affairs in order, especially when, as a good cook, she would like to start a restaurant. In the meantime, he has some lessons in sexual knowledge and awareness. The film has several chapters of lessons, both serious and humorous.
At times, the film is quite explicit in language, less so visually. It is not so much interested in being exploitative as in exploring the ignorance of the contemporary Canadian male, despite background of promiscuity, especially on the part of his girlfriend. There are some explicit jokes, especially with a cantaloupe reminding audiences who have seen American Pie of the possibilities for sex jokes.
In one experiment, he gets dressed up in women’s clothes, is discovered by the home rabbi and his wife, appears on television to the curiosity of his girlfriend, to the disgust of his mother.
While the hero gets involved in all kinds of awkward situations, doing a role-play in which he denounces his girlfriend only to be discovered by her and then pursuing her yet again, forgetting to come back and untie the stripper who has been instructing him, Jonas Chernik, who wrote the screenplay, makes his character both credible and limited in his outlooks on life.
Eventually, the stripper stands her own feet and organises her restaurant. The hero goes back to his girlfriend but, at a party with friends and family, he announces that they can never be married – and, though not immediately, there is a reconciliation with the stripper and the possibilities of a sensible future.
Emily Hampshire creates a very sympathetic character as Julie, the stripper, credible in the profession she has chosen but warm in her personality and certainly open to change and development.
