Film Festival 09 - My Year Without Sex
My Year without Sex
Australia 2009, 96m
Director: Sarah Watt
Fans of Sarah Watt's Look Both Ways will be delighted afresh by the
wise good humour that irradiates her new film. Natalie (a
wonderfully naturalistic Sacha Horler), is a young mother trying to
recover her health and a balanced view of the world after a
terrifying brush with death. Matt Day plays her husband, and the
title refers to his difficult year too, but he's so reassuringly
rock-steady Natalie sometimes wants to shake him. Meanwhile
childhood continues unperturbed by mortal dramas: 12-year-old Louis
is fixated on sports and sportsmen to the exclusion of all else,
and seven-year-old Ruby has a way of setting her heart, very
cheerfully, on the unaffordable.
Watts' view of their domestic chaos is pithily anti-formulaic: her
comedy is grounded in a keen eye for the unsignalled ways tears and
laughter irrupt in everyday life. The big questions - faith,
marriage, mortality - rub elbows with the daily concerns of modern
parenting, most notably the sexualisation of everything.
Australasian 'lower middle class' life, as Natalie wryly classifies
hers, is honoured with honesty. - BG
"It was clear from Look Both Ways that Watt was an original talent.
It's clearer now that she's an exceptional talent. Her ability to
write complex comedy about complex characters is uncommon in
Australian cinema. She writes about stuff that's real and direct
and sort of normal - children, home life, romance, illness and
always, always, the fear of death - but with a warmth, humour and
emotional intelligence that's disarming& She takes scenes from
domestic life and finds the bit that's most ridiculous,
embarrassing and alive." - Paul Byrnes, Sydney Morning Herald
www.myyearwithoutsex.com
