HOW TO PLEASE A WOMAN

Australia, 2022, 107 minutes, Colour.

Sally Phillips, Alexander England, Erik Thomson, Ryan Johnson, Tasman Walton, Myles Pollard, Cameron Daddo, Josh Thomson.

Directed by Renée Webster.

An Australian social comedy about sex (for the male characters) and about sex and sexuality (for the female characters). It has appealed to a female audience, not so much to male audiences (as the main male characters are presented more or less as gigolo dills).

Obviously, all human behaviour can be the subject of comedy, and has been, often very effectively. However, the test is always in the “how” the material is presented.

On the one hand, the serious side, this is a film about women feeling repressed, discarded in middle age, wanting to assert themselves, discover or rediscover their sexuality. On the other hand, the less serious side, this is a film about sex seen as casual, recreational, with the hope that this kind of sexuality will be fulfilling for the women.

Which means then that this is a mixture of the serious and the crass. And, female reviewers and bloggers have been very much in favour.

The plot concerns an English migrant to Australia, Sally Phillips, living in Fremantle, whose busy lawyer husband, Cameron Daddo, has lost interest in sex. And she loses her job, trying to help out a company of removalists which her company has decided to close down. In the meantime, her girlfriends have sent a stripper for her birthday who offers to do everything, anything she wants. She wants him to clean the house. So, this is the comic idea of the men in the removalist company becoming escorts, initially quite inept, needing instruction from the women, but their becoming a professional company – soon overloaded with bookings. The boss of the company, played by Erik Thomson, is a sympathetic older character who raises some questions about the whole enterprise and its repercussions on the personal and sexual level.

So, plenty of scenes with the middle-aged women, enjoying swimming, locker room chatter, experiences with the men, the lawyer husband discovering the truth, the police coming to investigate…

The full meaning of the title is limited to its word “please” for the woman sexually and the men just to move on to the next customer.