From 2008 remaining in memory as one of the more creatively bankrupt years in recent Australian cinema (and, let’s face it, just plain bankrupt – without the hyperbolic Australiana strainings of Baz Luhrmann’s patriotically titular Kidman-fest, 2008 was a 30 year low for box office takings around these here parts), 2009, thankfully, seems to be turning the tide to date with a succession of successful local productions – Mary and Max, Samson and Delilah, and, happy to report, Sarah Watt (Look Both Ways)’s second feature, My Year Without Sex.

Following a blackout in a doctor’s office, suburban mother Natalie (Sacha Horler) is on the receiving end of emergency surgery for a brain aneurysm. A degree of good fortune sees her emerge from the procedure with a newfound uncertainty for life and her familial responsibilities, as well as a prescribed list of practical avoidances (sneezing, straining on the toilet, stress or orgasm, three of the four her doctor suggests should be ‘avoidable’). Her audio technician husband Ross (Matt Day), likeable and harmlessly daggy, deals with the looming threat of redundancy under restructuring, as well as being a pretty crappy footy coach. Temptations flair, pets come and go, and the natural threats of suburbia (facing the bills, organising Christmas, keeping the kids in check) keep on stacking up, all without the catharsis of marital good-times and all under the looming possibilities of What May Happen. Natalie joins a church choir to provide herself some stress relief and happiness and examines the possibilities of burgeoning faith through her friendship with Margaret, a local minister (Maud Davey from Summer Heights High).

Lots of people use the suburban landscape as an opportunity to produce satire, a catalogue of not-laughing-with-laughing-at-ery where 2.5 kids and a competitively researched mortgage is bled as easy dystopia. Here, Watt is instead keen to show a genuine affection for the finer points of ordinary life, an interest in the small and familiar turning cogs of familydom, which find themselves in personal moments (such as a funeral service for a goldfish, and Ruby’s wait for the tooth fairy) which mostly manage to avoid the lures of sitcom-brand quirk. The net effect overall works, certainly, but there is the odd point where the whole thing feels like someone’s gone and thrown Packed to the Rafters: The Movie in the direction of the local Kino to see what exactly might happen. And for me, that’s what stops this being a great film about family (in the way I would suggest something like Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me is).

The story is, to a large extent, about the mundane yet joyful mechanics of love, family and friendships, the ways we choose to live with a shadow looming over us, and the small steps in the anticipation of larger steps we compel ourselves to make in order to answer the bigger questions placed before us. It places its characters against a backdrop of mortality, faith, fidelity, and some reasonably broadminded themes, but manages to do so without the storytelling feeling less than intimate; karaoke and the pokies, breakfast in bed, footy fandom, family dvd nights, these are the familiar places where My Year Without Sex both makes its drama known and shields it under the foreground of family commitment. The outliers of the story, a constant pop culture confrontation with sex and promiscuity, the broad encircling of pornography, as well as the few tangential steps the film makes (the approach of a would-be paedophile) towards ‘spikier’ drama, suggest the an us-against-the-world backdrop to the commitments of family.

The script is structured is structured in an episodic, elliptical way (although the knowingly tacky, monthly placecards separating the story by allusions to sexual positions are actually pretty genuinely tacky when all’s said and done), which can occasionally make it feel smaller than it should; but with some traditional points of resolution being dealt with ‘off stage,’ Watt’s storytelling clearly respects the viewers capacity to connect the dots, and to find the drama in small moments and not big confrontations.

All of the performances are top notch, including Jonathan Segat and Portia Bradley’s turns as kids who feel like the actual children of a family, and not some efficient way of deploying catch-phrase leaden cuteness to the big screen. Watt’s direction is assured enough to let the consequence of Natalie’s illness, which may have been high drama in other hands, to submerge itself under the family’s keepings-on. For instance, there’s something sweet in the fact that Louis’ tears in the hospital are as a result of his footy team losing, rather than his mother’s conditions; it’s not necessarily here as an easy laugh - the moment seems borne out of, ultimately, a naivete that his mother will always be there.

For a title that seems somehow ironically provocative, Watt has produced an insightful, gentle, affable film, rich on detail and respectful to character; one which occasionally crosses the line from feeling intimate to feeling small, but nonetheless remains highly recommended.

Review by Al Cossar

Director: Sarah Watt
Writer: Sarah Watt
Cast: Sacha Horler, Matt Day, Jonathan Segat, Portia Bradley, Maude Davey, Nick Farnell, Christine Moffat, Brett Robson, Sonya Suares
Australian theatrical release date: 28 May 2009