Better than Sex

Josh (David Wenham) and Cynthia (Susie Porter) meet at a party and share a cab home. She invites him up; over the next couple of days they have a lot of sex. Er, that's it.

Better than Sex is the headline film for the increasingly impressive annual London Australian Film Festival at the Barbican (April 7th - 12th 2001), but it is to be hoped that the other films on the bill have rather more to offer than this tedious exploration of sexual manners in Aussie twentysomethings. The story takes place almost entirely in Cynthia's apartment over three days and is recounted in flashback and voice-over by each of the two leads, much of it in straight-to-camera, after-the-event monologues (think Blind Date with dirty talk). However, no attempt at all is made to explore the possibility that either of them may have differing or conflicting accounts, thus denying the audience any post-modern Unreliable Narrator fun (what, no Keyser Soze?) or shock He Was a Psychopath All Along ending.

Instead the film is a collection of the usual gender wars clichés. She suspects he might be a bit untidy around the house; he dresses to go out in thirty seconds while she - you'll never guess - tries on dozens of outfits before declaring "I've nothing to wear". This is admittedly the low-point in a film that isn't so much bad as banal, and almost completely without laughs (I've no idea how it will be marketed, but any claims to be a 'romantic comedy' should prompt a trading standards investigation). The action has a couple of running commentaries comprised of clips of Cynthia and Josh's respective friends' attitudes to modern courtship and, disastrously, a creepy butch cabbie who's always ready with a pithy bon mot such as "It's never easy, is it?" Jonathan Teplitzky's debut feature is redeemed from total turkeydom by the playing of the two amiable leads and some crisp cinematography. But Better then Sex? Not this film.

Reviewed by John Atkinson