I have to say that as women get more muscle as screenwriters and film directors, the films they work on get dirtier and dirtier. They seem to have minds that don't draw the line in the sex scenes where male sensitivities would. Or maybe the "feminising" of male characters in recent movies - men who "care" and "feel" and have that sort of vulnerable agenda - has promoted a corresponding "masculining" of women - like the two female magazine executives shamelessly discussing a "blow-by-blow" article on "blow jobs" at the start of writer-director Valerie Breiman's Love and Sex; a comedy of "relationships" and nothing more, but done with some charm, a lot of wit, but at times an aggressively cool and libidinously uncouth view of sex. Famke Janssen is the journalist who turns the intimacies of her promiscuous dating into her column material (don't we know the type). A sitcom that goes further than Friends went, Love and Sex itemises the brash foreplay, panicky retreats, romantic strategies, crazy cavortings and angry bust-ups of Janssen's various pick-ups in ways that will probably evoke a high-recognition response from filmgoers, particularly promiscuous young women who'll likely see it as their gender's High Fidelity.
As a date movie for both sexes, though, it's top of the shopping list; they'll enjoy the pert one-liners and packed come-backs of a never-ending stream of male-female consciousness.
But the more mature surprise in the film is the appearance of Jon Favreau. He is no Richard Gere. With a face that seems to consist of a huge chin and a head placed on top, plus donnish spectacles and a tongue that wags with the waspish, Jewish vigour of a younger-generation Woody Allen, Favreau plays the role of Janssen's on-and-off-and-on-again beau.
He has a confidence that could pierce armour. She rattles it a bit when she intermittently hooks up with the narcissistic star (Josh Hopkins) of a porn video called Topless Ninja Girls - they meet at the dildo counter of a sex shop: a locale calculated to rouse gales of laughter in female filmgoers. But this guy can only talk movies and do lousy De Niro imitations - like much of today's young talent in Hollywood - and she soon returns to the articulate Favreau, signalling her devotion to him by unblushingly farting in bed. (A woman's touch, surely.)
The film is short, slick and sassily incorrect: one hilarious interlude features a charming male midget cockily marching through the magazine office beating tiny bongo drums and delivering a sung love-note from Favreau to Janssen. It's also slight, shallow and supremely forgettable - though I'd put money on Jon Favreau's being around to entertain us for quite a bit. I hope so.
Love And Sex
Cert: cert12
