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A summer's day on Hampstead Heath sees seven different couples talking about love and sex. There's a soon-to-be-divorced couple discussing why great sex just isn't enough, a gay couple discussing the possibility of adoption, a couple stifled by the awkwardness of their blind date picnic and an elderly pair rediscovering lost love amongst others.
The first full-length feature by director Ed Blum is one of those movies that's trying to ape movies like "Magnolia" or Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" by tying together several different stories. However, those films all have a driving, dramatic narrative that is interlinked by one or several dramatic set-pieces. A disparate group of people meet in seemingly random ways and have a jarring impact on others' lives. Unfortunately Blum doesn't have that framework to hang his stories on. Each story here is self-contained with the result that they end up feeling like a series of episodic talking heads. This is especially true as Blum has a tendency to shoot one actor at a time and cut between different points of view as if you were watching a talking tennis match. There's nothing to tie the threads together and characters from different stories rarely interact, perhaps just walking through another couple's scene. And even that feels contrived.
The pace is meandering and there's no visual style. Blum's approach appears to be getting in a big name cast and letting them get on with it. This is probably why so many of the performances feel so uneven. Stars of stage and screen often sleepwalk through their roles, throwing out lines with no emotional context. This makes it difficult to care about the players. The way the director has tried to fit the storylines together makes
for juddering shifts of pace as we hop from broad comedy to melancholy, suspicion and everything in between. As a result the film never gets going and the stagey conversations feel more like they should be in student actor's book of duologues than on the screen. In fact that's the problem with the whole shebang; it doesn't work as a film. I can see how it might succeed on stage, but there simply isn't enough in terms of content or scope for it to fill the big screen. Throughout the ninety-two minute running, you, like the camera, may often find yourself wandering off in an unfocussed manner.
Aschlin Ditta's screenplay feels like a ragbag of off-cuts from other projects. Taking the themes of sex and love as a starting point, she's merely come up with a handful of conversations around the theme that otherwise don't have anything in common with each other. Many of them just taper off instead of going somewhere. There's no narrative to drive the plot and none of the relationships is sufficiently well defined to work within the confines of each episode. Perhaps they might if they were released as a series of short films, but as vignettes in a larger scheme they lack the emotional depth to really draw you into each story. There is one thread in particular about a couple that isn't what it seems that would definitely work as a short but lacks the punch required to make it stand out amidst these incidents.
There are too many protagonists and not enough antagonists so there is no conflict of ideologies and any crossovers there may be feel clumsy. The characters feel unrealistic because the situations they are put in are too contrived, so you have no basis for how one might behave if you were one of them. Because each story is so short, you don't get to know the people and that makes it difficult to empathise with them. The dialogue is often too studied and lacks the ring of authenticity. It's as though some of the characters have thought about what they're going to say for too long before they open their mouths, while others come out with stream of consciousness that degenerates into nonsense.
The large ensemble cast showcases some very strong and some absolutely appalling performances. Andrew Lincoln gives a consistent if one-dimensional turn as a man caught looking at another woman's underwear by his wife. Holly Aird is his forthright, wind-up merchant spouse that isn't really allowed to do anything other than act as a plot device. Sophie Okonedo gives a bizarre and slightly troubling performance as Anna, a woman freshly dumped by her boyfriend that toys with a younger man's desires on the heath. Her style is just too big and unpredictable and you spend half your time wondering if she's going to kill the poor bloke and bury him in the woods. Playing against her can't have been easy for Tom Hardy, whose fidgety behaviour seems borne out of real uncertainty about his place. Noel isn't a very likeable character because he tries too hard and his intentions are transparent, but I think that's partly because of the abbreviated script.
Easily the most likeable characters are Pete and Sara, played by Adrian Lester and Catherine Tate. They are a couple about to get a divorce without any animosity. There's great warmth between them and a sense of fun that makes it easy to believe in them as friends and former lovers. Ewan McGregor gives a terrible turn as one half of a gay couple. You can tell he's just turned up for the pay packet because you don't see the character, you see Ewan McGregor acting. It's a performance entirely lacking in subtlety and truth. And it's all the more obvious in comparison with that of Douglas Hodge, who plays his lover. He gives a lovely measured showing as the wry, educated and settled half of the partnership. Also nicely played is the blind date picnic between Julia (Gina McKee) and Gerry (Hugh Bonneville). She is a nervy, tense worrywart, while he is a well-meaning, posh bumbler determined to misconstrue every action. The discomfort is palpable and the fragility of their slow thaw is ably illustrated when a single simple action smashes it to pieces.
The closest thing there is to a through line is the storyline of rediscovered love between Iris and Eddie, played by Eileen Atkins and Benjamin Whitrow. They are the only couple that physically goes anywhere yet conversely theirs is the storyline that remains most unresolved. Both parts are nicely played and there is warmth and a certain sense of reassurance about the relationship.
The score by Dominik Scherrer is a very earnest piece of work that doesn't help to hold the film together. Every couple, indeed almost every character has their own little theme. For the opening that is supposed to introduce you to the varied happenings of Hampstead Heath, earnest strings meld with swooping flutes, blowsy brass and doo-dooing vocals. But before you've assimilated them, we're onto the first storyline and its attendant cheeky xylophone and flute motifs. Even minor characters get their own piece of the action with choral music for the French girl that creates marital disharmony. Mad Anna gets spiky piano and synths, while Pete gets warm brass and piano and Sara gets flourishes of sad brass. The only time the music really makes sense is during the picnic scene where the syncopated piano melodies match the agitated state of the players.
"Scenes of a Sexual Nature" is proof that even if you throw a bunch of well-known actors at a project, there's no guarantee of success. This is essentially a student film dressed up as a big-screen debut. It is clumsily written, directed and performed. If the makers want to recoup their budget, I suggest they write all the conversations down and put together a book of two-handers for drama students because it certainly doesn't work as a film.
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Sex and love. Some seek it, some need it, some spurn it and some pay for it, but we're all ... more
involved in it. Set on one afternoon on Hampstead Heath, London, the film investigates the minutiae of seven couples. The film is a comedic and erotically charge...
Seven couples. Seven Stories. One Common Ground... Sex and love. Some seek it some need ... more
it some spurn it and some pay for it but we're all involved in it. Set on one afternoon on Hampstead Heath London the film investigates the minutiae of seven ...
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![Scenes Of A Sexual Nature [DVD] [2006]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78135777.jpg "Scenes Of A Sexual Nature [DVD] [2006]")
Feb 20th, 2007
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