My Awkward Sexual Adventure

My Awkward Sexual Adventure

One thing that surprised some observers is the inclusion of Sean Garrity’s film sex farce My Awkward Sexual Adventure in the elite group of more refined films during the announcement for this year’s TIFF Canada’s Top Ten. And it is not to say in the case that it is a movie of poor quality. It is in fact a rather charmingly disturbing and frequently humorous film about a man exploring the different possible experiences that can be had in the bedroom.

The initial spark is gone in the relationship between Jordan (Jonas Chernick) and Rachel (Sarah Manninen). He no longer excites her in bed, and so she has given him an ultimatum: either improve or get out. Together with his friend Dandak (Vik Sahay), and an aspiring actress (Emily Hampshire) who agreed to help him regain confidence in performance as an accountant to satisfy her urges, he sets out on an episodic journey to retrieve his relationship.

Breaking the movie into chapters and dedicating each one to a particular sexual lesson is perhaps the only major drawback of the film. At some points, it tends to appear as an unsuccessful late night comedy. Certainly, the sexual content and visual babble are quite off the charts in the Canadian context but not any different than what is usually the norm in any Judd Apatow comedy.

The script by Chernick and the direction by his most constant collaborator Garrity are somewhat boxed in because of the format they are obliged to adhere to, but the different cast performances, some impressive comical touches and set pieces manage to sustain the pace of the movie about a very passive and occasionally rather unimpressive lead character.

Chernick’s Jordan is a huge dope and a character that likely wouldn’t be in any other comedy, however, that is precisely the point. It is a performance that builds up slowly and follows precisely what the material is asking him to do. Sahay here has the same energy and mania that he normally reserves for his supporting roles of this level.

That said, the one who truly stands out is Hampshire who portrays a character who is so endearing and strong that you wish the film was practically about her. She doesn’t “steal scenes” she literally holds the movie together at its weakest points where it is almost about to be completely pointless.

Canada used to be on the throne especially with regards to the creation of the broad humor the type a My Awkward Sexual Adventure attempts to be. While it isn’t anywhere near how the previous ones were, it’s noteworthy to see how the nation almost overnight decided to stop producing this genre of movies. This light and entertaining piece is well on its way to getting the recognition it has deserved which is a step in the right direction.

We risked the possibility of becoming too pompous in the use of our cinema which is why Garrity’s film stands out.

One’s first feelings are overwhelmingly excitement, but also wistfulness about what might come next, considering the nature of the film in which they are participating, and the world around is full of stories and one sanctioning England in the world there are a large number of ruins, chaos and elegant designs on how all this can be.

If you have read the book upon which the film is based then “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang will make you adept in understanding the alien languages and also in figuring what the filmmakers are painting in front of you at the screen right from the beginning. What you know will happen will happen in the course of the film, and still you will love it. Not for a moment did I think It is about time such a film was made. Considering what has been said about the story, it is supposed to wrap its audience in anguish.

The viewers need not have an idea of what the film will be about or what the film has already coneted the viewers position within the narrative in terms of shades of emotions one may experience while tuned into the unfolding frames.

What caught my attention the most in this movie, is how well it encapsulates not just the theme and core of the story- that engagement with the aliens will be alien, it will be hard, and it will change us and our perspective for good. But as it goes further, it also captures the essence of watching and reading the story, a nonlinear story told in second person point of view that was supposed to be unfarmable.

The film has emerged and rightly so as the adapted version of the short story. It is possible, as it was for me, to grieve not only the central part of the tale but also of the awe of its ‘impossible’ realization as an adaptation.

The story goes as follows: a talented linguist called Louise Banks is brought in to figure out how to speak with aliens on a mysterious ship that has parked itself in Montana one of twelve that have appeared all over the globe.

Louise has to deal with a sardonic astrophysicist, and more and more unstable military, in her attempt to decipher the Heptapod language of touch and mime, created by creatures so different from us in every respect that there is practically no relationship of any kind at the outset. That is, until she starts to write and they reply.

Inevitably, Louise begins to have some visions. Or are they flashbacks? Or even the future? As a matter of fact, the film depicts the life of Louis and her daughter Hannah, who was unfortunately taken away from him too soon. It is only over time that we slowly come to the realization that history hasn’t occurred yet. As Louise learns more about Heptapod writing, she learns the Heptapods’ understanding of time as well as space itself.

It is not that she is viewing events in the future. Instead, she discovers that she can now live all of her life at once. This then leads to a race against time in which Louise learns and attempts to convey what she has learned before the human governments and armed forces sally forth, as is their wont, to the usual foolishness of violence in the name of security.

Engineers. The Story Of Your Life was first published in 1998 and the same year won them the Nebula as well as Sturgeon awards. It has remained the most widely referred short story during the last twenty years. The film is an admirable interpretation which becomes quite exceptional in reaching more peaceful movies about first contact The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Contact, all belong to the category of my favorite sci-fi movies. The basic cast in the movie Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker deal softly and are decent while at it.

Louise was the name of two other woman scientists in cerebral science fiction films, Ryan Stone in Gravity, and Ellie Arroway in Contact. All three were driven, intellectually independent, successful career women and remarkably similar but a cliché that can easily be explored more in written and visual counterparts of the science fiction genre. I would only view such three movies.

My feelings about the film Gravity were mixed. Don’t get me wrong; it had strong performances and a female lead whom you could warm to, but in the end, it felt that this was just another story about someone dealing with the death of a child. She started off being entertaining, maybe dramatic, but then, unfortunately, she became boring. I came for the space adventure, but the intertwining grief seemed a little too overdone. It just wasn’t the story I expected it to be.

I recall people who hadn’t read “Story of Your Life” in Flash Forward as I was projecting Arrival. They were not acquainted with the anime substance, so it wasn’t evident for them where the scenes of Louise and Hannah were other than illustrations. They were fully into the cliché and prepared to see Louise as a mother who has neglected her feelings and is overly focused at work. Only later, as the movie progressed, did they understand: these are not recollections. The baby has not yet been conceived.

I was very pleased to witness how Arrival, in addition to several other things, breaks audience’s expectations on a cliché that has been cheekily explored in Gravity. Can we understand Arrival as a repetition of the processes of past events, a calmer word – lost love? Yes, but grief should not be so easily generalized and overpowers the science fiction device, here it is integral to the core. They aren’t opposites. They are related but not the same thing.

Of course Arrival is a logical sequel to Contact, and Ellie Arroway is a seemingly conceptual forebear of Louise Banks. However, unlike Arroway who is seeking alien contact, Banks is rather thrust into it. Also, whereas in Contact, a more reassuring vision is offered one where the advanced alien races who come in contact with us are looking for us like Ellie’s father and understanding alien races who nurture us to expand our horizons of the universe in Arrival, a more disquieting vision is offered: the Heptapods are so foreign as to be nearly beyond comprehension.

What I want to point out here is that the Heptapods are gorgeous. The incredible appearances of a Heptapod were believable made up of whatever they used for bones, muscles and tendons, with real working joints and mechanics. Most significantly, they are not typical California Hollywood CGI bobbies. They are not created to spark some specific emotions in the audience, be it pain or ugliness or even love. They simply are.

I think this is the first film about first contact that did not reinforce my belief that the process of contact will be cakewalk. Most such movies depict them as invaders or conquerors, or potential peace-discontented regimes these are understandable as these things were done by the humanity, itself. But to reach to beings which perceive time and space in a universe where time and space are totally different?

Who offer a “gift” which linguists translate as “weapon” since that’s precisely what humans are looking, and fearing? And inspite of all of these, like the best of the films regarding first contact portrays, this is one of those critical scenarios and the movie quite strongly supports such attempts.

I think some readers of the short story might be frustrated by the incorporation of the larger context of world events, such as politics and paranoia, into Louise’s story. The inclusion of a storyline concerning the Chinese government orchestrating violent conflict, for example, and the unexploded grenade left behind by a disgruntled soldier remind one of the staging of a sabotage earlier in the story, in Contact: This was the Hollywoodization we were worried about.

Still, the inclusion of the wider world became important in order to scale up such an intimate short story for A-list Hollywood standards. It does not betray the essence of the story. The possibilities both of time and emotions are still there. The majority of the movie shows Lousie, how she squeezes the tremor out of her hands, how her eyes meet the Heptapods and how her eyes turn to a distant corner within her head that haunts some strange thought. The narrative of the film is mostly situated on Louise starting and ending the film with her voice and she narrates most parts of the film with her voice over.

It has already become clear that Arrival provides us with something we need so desperately now a feature film with scientist characters that embodies problem solving in the idealistic context of peace in exploration which along with Interstellar and The Martian is likely to become a trend. It is clear to me that Arrival is going to be a big box office hit and this trend of cerebral alternative problem-solving based science fiction becomes increasingly present in big screen blockbusters.

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