My Year Without Sex
My Year Without Sex begins as the kind of shaggy suburban comedy that Australian cinema does so well, but writer/director Sarah Watt has meshed a low-key love story with sly social commentary. Despite the title, sex is everywhere in this film, but as something troublesome, complicated and even absurd.
Natalie and Ross (the excellent Sacha Horler and Matt Day) are a youngish, lower-middle-class couple from Melbourne's western suburbs. As the film opens, their two kids catch them having sex - which made a late-thirtysomething preview audience gasp and giggle with recognition. But when Natalie has a life-threatening brain aneurysm and is told to avoid undue strain, sex is off the agenda and the family dynamic is changed forever.
Told through a series of observational vignettes, separated by intertitles that liken each month to a different phase of seduction, the film is full of subtly hilarious moments - look out for the goldfish funeral and Natalie's turn as the tooth fairy. But its real triumph is the effortless way it weaves big questions about religion, paedophilia, death and economics into a story about ordinary people.
Format: Cinema
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