Starring: Sacha Horler, Matt Day, Maude Davey and Fred Whitlock
Distributor: Independent
Runtime: 97 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011
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Writer/director Sarah Watt would be advised to clear space on her mantelpiece for more AFI Awards to go with those won by her first feature, 2005’s Look Both Ways. Most of the same backup team worked with her again on this film, and everything about it, from script to direction, to acting, production design, cinematography, editing, even the cute title sequences that flag each new month in the year-long story, is outstanding.
It is 12 months in the life of Natalie (Sacha Horler) and Ross (Matt Day) and their two children, who live rather untidily but happily in a weatherboard house in Melbourne’s western suburbs. The depiction of their family life rings absolutely true in every small detail, down to the kids squabbling and their preoccupation with the Western Bulldogs footy team, the chaos of Christmas time, the shortage of money and so on. For this verisimilitude alone the film deserves high praise, much of the kudos going to young Portia Bradley and Jonathan Segat as their children who, along with the other child actors, are totally convincing as ordinary, nice Aussie kids. Not a skerrick of precocity anywhere here.
But the film is much more than this. At the start, Natalie is stricken by an aneurism and nearly dies. When she emerges from her coma following delicate brain surgery, the doctor tells her a recurrence could be triggered by sneezing, heavy lifting, straining on the toilet or having sex. “Three out of four should be avoidable,” he suggests. And that’s where the film’s title comes from – Natalie’s concern about when she might be able to resume sexual relations with her husband and the stresses on their marriage that enforced abstinence imposes.
Natalie also has many hurdles to clear before she can resume a full life and go back to work. She suffers memory lapses, she can’t perform rudimentary tasks or do simple arithmetic. She starts accusing Ross of not pulling his weight around the house. He, meanwhile, is under stress at his workplace, where “restructuring” is in progress and there is no certainty he will hold his job. An attractive young woman at his workplace (Sonya Suares) clearly would be prepared to proffer consolation, but will Ross succumb?
All this is played very convincingly. Watts’ script skates nimbly around the potential clichés, even one involving scratchie tickets and the possibility of a financial windfall. She also introduces a couple of scenes that might have derailed the film if handled less adroitly: one involving a savage dog, the other a predatory paedophile.
Peripheral characters all ring true, particularly Fred Whitlock and Katie Wall, as ostentatiously wealthy Uncle Greg and Auntie Winona, and Maude Davey as Margaret, the film’s most unusual character. Davey is a delight as the Anglican priest who supplies pastoral care when Natalie is at her lowest and who is revealed to have had a colourful past and is not above using an internet dating site.
My Year Without Sex is a lovely movie. You care deeply about its characters, it has things to say about illness, fidelity, church, belief in God, stress, gambling, capitalism, bringing up kids, mortgages, sportsmanship … a whole range of issues we can all identify with. With the luminous central performances by Horler and Day, its many funny lines, its warm humanity, it is a film about a sombre subject that is brim-full of joy.
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