Film review: My Year Without Sex

CHARM: Good-natured honesty.

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Some movies appear to achieve exactly what they set out to do, and the totally charming My Year Without Sex is one of them.

Its charm is in its good-natured honesty, highlighted by its recognisable setting - and by that I don't just mean Australia, even though that gives it added resonance here in New Zealand.

It depicts midlife: most particularly the muddle that comes with being parents, when what can feel like a mountain of needs can easily outstrip available resources.

The year we share in the movie is without sex for Natalie and Ross because Natalie has a brain aneurism. The disorganisation the family lives in becomes a metaphor for what's going on inside Natalie's mind, and Ross' assembling of Ikea flat-pack storage so they can put things away is a beautiful parallel for Natalie's looking at her options. Yoga? Religion? She just needs something to help her make sense of what's happening.

The casting is superb. They come from just across that ditch, so they sound not unlike us and they look refreshingly normal. Perfectly complemented by a beautifully understated performance from her husband Ross, Sacha Horler (Natalie) in particular stars. She's in many ways a plain woman, yet the more she endures, the more beautiful she becomes. The word "endures" is misleading though - this is a film about accepting and coping and fear and love, not sainthood.

Natalie's friend Margaret, an ex- druggie popstar turned Christian, is a joy. The children, Louis and Ruby, are delicious - again, they're normal, whatever that may be. Ruby gets one of the movie's best lines. Pulled up at the petrol station, she looks first at another family in a lat-model car towing a boat, then across at a vagrant slouched beside the pump. She asks where they fit - are they nearer the vagrant or the rich family?

Just as she does with a fallen scratch lottery ticket, writer/director Sarah Watt doesn't go for the glib answers. I loved Natalie's response to her daughter's question, just as I loved the mass of marvellous visual metaphors in this movie, of which the gambling ticket is only one. I loved the underlying message too - even if there aren't always answers, just asking the question can be enough.

Okay, so it's heart-warming, feel-good and funny. But best of all, it's honest. I'm hard-pressed to think of a recent movie that I've enjoyed as much.

MY YEAR WITHOUT SEX

Director: Sarah Watt
Starring: Sacha Horler and Matt Day.
Time: 95 mins
Rating: M

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