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The desire to have sex is a natural impulse, and for the
most part, a healthy one, but there’s something decidedly
unnatural and downright disturbing about the copulating couples
in the new documentary Sex With Strangers. If they
were simply fictional characters in a narrative film, perhaps
it would be possible to accept these strangers’ deviant ways;
but the film is a “real life” peek into real peoples’ lives,
and as a result, we’re left with the feeling that these subjects
are profoundly deranged. The fact that we’re alienated by
the couples’ bizarre lives makes Sex With Strangers
as hollow as, well, sex with strangers.
The three couples we follow are James and Theresa,
Shannon and Gerard, and Calvin, Sara, and
Julie. The first couple, James and Theresa, travel
throughout the nation in their motor home, periodically stopping
at seedy roadside bars to seek out couples who are eager to
indulge in swinging. Why James and Theresa or the couples
they pick up are willing to have sex with each other is perhaps
the greatest cinematic mystery since "Who is Keyser Soze?"
yet they do it anyway, and I suppose directors Joe
and Harry Gantz expect us to find it titillating, sensual,
or at the very least, interesting. Unfortunately, Sex With
Strangers is even more vapid than the Gantz’s “Taxicab
Confessions.” The only thing it leaves us wondering is what
level of embarrassment their family and friends are currently
suffering.
The next couple is Shannon and Gerard, who are slightly more
complex than James and Theresa, and should feel even more
ashamed because of it. After all, here’s a couple with a young
daughter at home, and while they try to shield her from their
lifestyle, wouldn’t it be more prudent just to give it up?
That idea seems fine with Shannon, who appears somewhat nervous
about swinging, but Gerard decides if she won’t swing, he’ll
swing without her. They lead an immensely harmful marriage,
which is made to seem even more unhealthy as they divulge
their lifestyle to one of their mothers. Whereas sex used
to be a private matter, Sex With Strangers expects
us to applaud its subjects’ openness, which proves nothing
less than impossible—it’s like admiring a guest on “Jerry
Springer.”
The last couple—or more appropriately, threesome—is Calvin,
Sara, and Julie. The problem with three-ways is that one person
is always left feeling like the fat kid who didn’t get picked
to play dodgeball, and in this case, Calvin is definitely
the fat kid, though he refuses to cop to it. Calvin wants
all the goodies for himself, and whines like an overgrown
baby when Sara and Julie decide to get it on sans mister man.
Of course, most women know that there’s something supremely
unsatisfying about a series of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am encounters,
something Calvin is slow to understand.
On a similar note, audiences know there is something supremely
unsatisfying about a documentary that has no real point, and
no real points of interest. In comparison to recent sex-themed
documentaries such as Porn Star and Wad, Sex with
Strangers is one limp noodle.
—Erin Steele
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