dir. Joe and Harry Gantz
Plays Fri Sept 13-Thurs Sept 19 at the Varsity.
Questions spring to mind after enduring Sex with Strangers: Is anything duller than listening to unattractive, inarticulate people plumbing the shallows of their stunted emotional lives? Is there anything sadder than two lamebrained girls competing for the affections of an emotionally abusive piece of shit? Is anything more repulsive than watching repulsive people--and I'm not talking about physical repulsiveness here--having sex with other repulsive people?
Two couples and a triad are profiled in this dishonest, distressing, and disturbing documentary about swingers by Joe and Harry Gantz (creators of HBO's Taxicab Confessions). What's distressing about Sex with Strangers is not the thoroughly shock-free subject matter--swingers today have all the shock value of buttered bread--but the particular swingers the filmmakers decided to focus on. In ascending order of repulsiveness, we meet:
1. James and Theresa, a thirtysomething Southern couple who travel around the country in a motor home, going from one swing club to another.
2. Shannon and Gerard, parents who got into organized swinging at the urging of a marriage counselor in Mississippi.
3. Calvin and Sara and Julie, a trio of twentysomethings. Sara and Julie are at war for the affections of Calvin, an emotionally abusive, manipulative, physically repulsive, Lycra-T-shirt-wearing scumbag.
Charmed, I'm sure.
While the inner lives of swingers are worth considering--how do couples who have sex with other people organize their emotional lives?--the men and women in Sex with Strangers aren't articulate enough to address the issues of love and lasting commitment in an intelligent way. They are all, however, afflicted with Real World Syndrome, a malady characterized by the erroneous belief that since someone is pointing at a camera at you, you must be an interesting person, and the things you're saying must be profound. RWS sufferers tend to make serious, scrunched-up faces as they blather on and on, gamely pretending the cameraman and sound guy aren't in the room with them. Sadly, there's currently no treatment or cure for RWS, but avoiding pieces of shit like Sex with Strangers might be a good start.
