Ostensibly another film about casual encounters and the obstacles they pose for depth of feeling, "Better Than Sex" is actually about little else than sex. Josh and Cynthia meet at a party, share a cab home and then tea in her loft (this is an Australian film, after all), before getting down to the real business, which is an evening of raging, call-the-cops grinding. Each claims to prefer the unmessiness of one-night stands to relationships, which hardly explains the mess they make of Cynthia's apartment during the succeeding three days of torrid fun. Wild romp stumbles into
"Better Than Sex"
Mars-Venus yawn fest
Screens at 8:30 p.m. tomorrow
1/2
Josh is a wildlife photographer, and during rare post-coital interludes, the duo watch films of copulating animals, including lions, zebras and -- once again, this being an Australian film -- koala bears. (Needless to say, you'll never look at a Qantas commercial in the same way again.)
Predictably, at about 30 minutes into the movie, Josh and Cynthia find that they have real feeling for each other, and the C-word (commitment, not cunnilingus) rears its ugly head. "Excuse me, but isn't this supposed to be casual?" says Cynthia, but there's no turning back, and it isn't long before the movie has degenerated into a boilerplate critique of male-female relations. (Why is it so hard for men to lift the toilet seat? Why does it take women so long to get dressed? Who cares?)
After a half-hour or so of this Mars-Venus stuff, you might wish the film had stuck to its earlier rawness, and John and Cynthia had gone their separate ways once the flames died down. Besides, the only compatibility they evince is in the bedroom. Still, Susie Porter and David Wenham give finely etched performances in the lead roles, even if they never quite persuade us that there is something better than sex, and director Jonan Teplitzky's painterly compositions go a long way toward relieving the guilt we felt at watching a nudie film.
By Scott Vogel
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