Love & Sex

Love & Sex centers on Kate, played by Famke Janssen, a writer for a fictional woman’s magazine similar to Cosmopolitan. The movie uses her job as a framing device. An article she is tasked with writing motivates an examination of the failures of her love life from first crush to present day, told through flashbacks in chronological order, which makes up the bulk of the story. It is a little About Last Night and a lot High Fidelity but has neither the focus of a Mamet play nor the richness of a Nick Hornby book and therefore doesn’t excel the way those two adaptations do. Perhaps the best way to understand Love & Sex is to compare it directly to High Fidelity, as both films were released the same year with similar premises. Only Love & Sex is nowhere near as good.

They aren’t exactly the same movie, by any means. Love & Sex is a story with a female protagonist told from the female perspective, written and directed by a woman. High Fidelity is the exact opposite. On the other hand, they both make heavy use of narration to build an intimate bond between viewer and protagonist by verbalizing their inner thoughts. They both feature a retrospective on failed relationships as an exercise in personal growth. Both main characters have failed long term relationships that loom large over the rest of their romantic history. The problem for Love & Sex is that High Fidelity just does it so much better. High Fidelity has better developed characters, more rich storytelling, and more flair to its filmmaking.

Rob, from High Fidelity, has the kinds of quirks one would expect from a Nick Hornby character. He is weirdly obsessive about something, in this case music. He has a very particular way of thinking about the world and of structuring his life. He is emotionally stunted and somewhat self centered in a way that allows for character growth throughout the story. He is prone to imaginative flights of fancy. There is a lot going on there. Kate doesn’t show much about herself. She seems quick to anger and is emotionally unavailable. That’s it.

The storytelling in High Fidelity is better too. High Fidelity is longer, sure, but with those extra thirty or so minutes comes the ability to expand the side characters and develop the story more naturally. High Fidelity isn’t just about Rob’s romantic life but about his work life too, and how those two sometimes cross paths. While Kate is essentially never shown in a work context outside of the main framing device, Rob has his record store. This provides two fun side characters in his similarly music obsessed coworkers, an arena in which to expand Rob’s interests outside his relationships, and more opportunities to contextualize Rob’s love life beyond the relationships themselves. Love & Sex doesn’t have that additional texture and so all but one of the relationship vignettes feel quite flat. The movie doesn’t let us in on how Kate’s friends might feel about her boyfriends, how previous relationship failures inform her future choices, or how Kate’s maturing as a person as she ages changes her tastes or affects her judgement.

Finally, High Fidelity just has more flair to its filmmaking. While both movies have a simplicity associated with lower budget productions, High Fidelity has style and Love & Sex is bland. High Fidelity has a particular way of breaking the fourth wall that lets Rob talk directly to the audience. Love & Sex has an uninspired voice over. High Fidelity uses Rob’s love of Top 10 lists to add form and structure to his thoughts and elucidate his personality. Love & Sex has no equivalent means for rounding out Kate. High Fidelity uses Rob’s imagination to create visual metaphors for his inner thoughts, desires, and insecurities, like when he imagines himself breaking a phone over his ex’s new boyfriend’s smug face. Love & Sex functions on a very surface level with Kate getting heated, yelling, and storming out of various dwellings. There just isn’t anything that elevates the material.

Love & Sex isn’t a complete turkey and it may seem unfair to spend an entire review simply comparing it to another, similar movie. But I think that comparison is revelatory of the film’s many faults. It is not very interesting or deep, it has weak characterization of basically everyone, it isn’t well written, nor is it constructed, in writing or shooting, with any kind of panache or style. It also doesn’t help that the one thing it has going for it, a fairly unique means for telling a romantic story, I’ve already seen done better somewhere else.

Would Recommend: If you have a thing for Famke Janssen. Or Jon Favreau for that matter.

Would Not Recommend: If you want a movie with more flavor than a bowl of plain porridge.