This film may leave you moaning in despair, groaning in agony, screaming in irritation at the sheer embarrassing awfulness of entire scenes. It’s a comedy directed by Sean Garrity about a married couple who decide to kickstart their nonexistent sex life after packing their kids off to camp. A smarter, sharper film might have explored what happens next in an otherwise happy marriage when the spark goes out. Instead, the comedy here is as broad as it gets, with some wildly unconvincing and unhilarious set-pieces.
Emma (Emily Hampshire) is an art teacher who is married to her childhood sweetheart Josh (Jonas Chernick). Ten years of raising small kids has killed off their sex life. In one of the film’s few decent jokes Josh compares his feelings about sex with Emma to her chicken stir-fry: “I don’t love it, but I eat it.” So they decide to spice things up, beginning with a disastrous threesome. Next, for reasons that make not one iota of sense, they book a night out at a sex club, where the clientele turns out to be a bunch of wrinkly old men in bondage leather (a bit of an easy target, that). Perhaps the funniest moments come when the pair try doing it on ecstasy, with a dozen bottles of water on the coffee table in case of dehydration.
Like the couple’s dull sex, there is nothing surprising, adventurous or pleasurable about the mechanical plot. Lily Gao gives a film-stealing performance, improving just about every scene she’s in as Josh’s deadpan millennial colleague Kelly. Perhaps the weirdest thing of all about the film is its squeamishness about actual sex; with their bland blank sitcom faces, no one ever looks like they are experiencing anything approaching actual desire.
• The End of Sex is released on 3 July on digital platforms.
