View image Ennis Ermer and Peter Oldring are roommates who co-star with Natalie Lisinska in "Young People F***ing."
In my previous blog entry, I told of receiving a message from a reader in Montreal who wanted know how I would deal with reviewing a new Canadian film with the f-word in its title. Would my paper print the title? What were my thoughts? I now have an opportunity to deal directly with those questions, because Steve Hoban, the film's producer, has sent me a DVD, along with a bulletin about its June 13 opening date in Canada, and a U.S. release later this summer.
Having seen the film and been pleasantly surprised by it, I now have more thoughts about the title, which is "Young People Fucking" on the print itself, and "Young People F***ing" in the advertising. I'm not convinced the title does the film any favors. Yes, it calls attention to itself and generates publicity, but it doesn't suggest that this will be a good-humored, thoughtful, observant film, which it is.
To get the essential question out of the way at the beginning: Yes, this is an "adult" film, but only technically. It is not hard-core. It contains no genitals of either sex, and no "money shots," as the porn industry inelegantly calls them. It is simply about five couples who meet, talk, and have sex. Sometimes they even seem to be making love. It was shot in five apartments, and some doorsteps.
Director Martin Gero and his co-writer, Aaron Abrams, outline their plan at the beginning. There will be five stories, involving The Friends, the Couple, the Exes, the First Date and the Roommates. With an admirable sense of symmetry, Gero follows these four couples (and a threesome) through six stages of f***ing, which he identifies as prelude, foreplay, sex, interlude, orgasm and afterglow. That seems like a pretty comprehensive list, omitting only Sending Out for Chinese.
The dialogue sounds like these actors were assigned in acting class to improvise their characters discussing their situations. My notion is that real couples, especially those who know each other well, such as the Exes and the Couple, would spend a great deal less time talking than these people do. But, yes, the Friends might spend that much time, because they're negotiating the possibility of having sex with one another to eliminate all the bother of strangers. They have some good dialog: "Respect is like the opposite of liking someone," for example. Or the girl who changed her name from Dora Fox to Jamie because she liked that better, "And how was I to know he was going to start winning all these Oscars?"
The stories are not intercut; this is not a hyperlink movie, thank God, because then we might drown, not in a sea of sweat or sperm, but of dialog. No great lessons are learned. There is little high drama. As it stands, the screenplay could supply fodder for countless theatrical companies. It's...engaging, that's what it is. These are all essentially nice people. Canadians, you know.
My favorite situation, by far, is in the story titled The Roommates. Here we get Gord (Ennis Ermer) and his roommate Dave (Peter Oldring), and Gord's girlfriend Inez (Natalie Lisinska). Gord suggests Dave join him and Inez in bed. Dave, a quiet kinda guy, goes along with it. Then it turns out Gord would rather watch (while eating a submarine sandwich) than participate. Then Gord starts coaching Dave: "She really likes it when you grab her hair!" Then Gord's hand is on Dave's butt, which Dave does not appreciate. Finally all three are smoking cigarettes.
And so it goes. Not a great movie, but fun, and the title makes it sound cheaper than it is. I liked a sequence in which a girl employs a sexual device on her guy, who later complains that he said "wait," "stop," and "no." He complains, "When a girl says 'no,' that means to stop!" You have to admit he has a point.
Rating: Three stars
Thanks for the review. I saw it at the TIFF last year and will see it tomorrow.
The strongest part of the film is the writing which is extremely creative....it hangs together well...theres some really great lines. I think there's something here that most people can relate to regardless of age.
So to me it wouldn't matter what the title is, this is a film well worth watching. I hope it makes it to the US....its a real treat.
Roger, I appreciate the review, but why do you call the film X-rated, "technically", if in fact there are no genital shots, it's not pornographic and of course the X-rating doesn't even exist in either the US or Canada?
Ebert: Excellent point. I have changed the wording to "an adut film." I believe the producer described it to me as "X rated," which is just a figure of speech these days.
"Yes, this is an X-rated film, but only technically." Although MPAA replaced the X-rating back in 1990 with NC-17, is the verbiage "an X-rated film" still pertinent today in various forms of media describing certain movie films? The X-rating term seems to be a description with no end in usage or backing at least here in the United States. And yet, we all still fondly use it just like it is a close cousin of the f word! As for NC-17, I am still wondering, to this day, if a film is X-rated, or should I just skip the movie all together.
Maybe we are on the cusp of a new type of film: the Dogma95 film that people can actually watch. (I leave it up to Roger to pen a more, uh, un-cumbersome nomenclature. Obviously.)
From this review I'm reminded of Robert Downey Jr.'s Two Girls and a Guy which had the same kind of loose, first-performance aspect that seems to power this film. How nice it would be to see a genre of films start up where people act, smart people direct, and smarter people edit. They could even have plot lines about what people actually do with each other and sets that look like where people live. Brilliant!
Clearly one should not look for these geniuses in the marketing departments of YPF. "Screwing" would have gotten the message out just as well, probably would not have limited the possibilities of this film playing at your local mall, and in its own way, had a tougher sound, a more authentic sound, than the ubiquitous "fucking".
What a bad title. Roger--can you imagine Bosomania as "Bodacious Swinging Teats"? For god's sake--that's why it's more fun to say "tittilate" than "tit". Ask any fourth grader.
I'm not convinced the title does the film any favors.
It got you to review the f***ing thing, didn't it? :)
Dear Mr. Ebert,
Your humor is priceless. You wrote, "Sometimes they even seem to be making love." as if "making love" were the social sin in this film and 'f-ing' the norm.
Roger, would you have even reviewed the movie, much less written a blog entry about it, if it didn't have the f-word in the title?
In other words, the producers' gamble paid off: put "fuck" in the title and it will start people talking, even if most might be offended (and even if the title does, as you say, do some disservice to the storyline). In other other words: Any publicity is good publicity. Sex sells.
Does "Young People F***ing" presage a new wave in movie titling -- perhaps to get the youth demo to dust off some classics they might not otherwise bother with: "Citizen Kane Fucking," "Singin' (and Fuckin') in the Rain," and "Casa-Fucking-Blanca"?
Wow! A film review by Roger Ebert with no stars assigned. It sounds like you give it 3 stars, right?
My apologies to the filmmakers. In the comments on the original blog I mistakenly indicated that the film opened in Toronto last week to "largely apathy" as I hadn't seen any reviews. Turns out it opened today to somewhat above average reviews.
Regarding your column in today's Sun-Times, you seem to have changed your tune since I contacted you eight years ago when I was writing a book about swearing (CUSS CONTROL, The Complete Book on How to Curb Your Cursing). I asked if you thought swearing in the movies was often gratuitious, and if you felt it was contributing the increase of profanity in public places. You replied that anyone who objects to swearing in movies must belong to an elderly women's knitting club. This morning you wrote, "I feel today a general decrease in public civility." That was precisely the point I was making.
A small correction, he is eating a tube of cookie dough, not a submarine sandwhich!
Great review, and as a Canadian, it is exciting to see our films garner any speck of cross-border attention -- and I assume that if and when the movie open (in what I assume will be a limited release) in the States, you'll give it some stars?
Philip its a three asterisk review.
oh and what happened to your Mister Lonely review? webmaster has not gotten back to me.
Ebert: I have complained twice.
I think I would fail to even register the film in my mind if I saw it in a video store; my internal censor would warn me that this film would bore me. The title seems to betray a film of very small ambitions. If they changed it to "Fucking young people" it might appeal to my sense of the macabre. "Young Canadians fucking" might make me laugh.
A good title can have power and poetry, even cause you to think; "The heart is a lonely hunter", "Children of a lesser God", "The unbearable lightness of being."
As it stands it sounds like it might be a useful film for fairly young teenagers to go laugh, cringe and kiss their boyfriends/girlfriends. Good for them. It's probably better than the re-hashes of children's shows and irritatingly self-conscious horror films that I had to sit through at 16-17. I doubt there is much that is "adult" about this film, and less that is erotic, though it probably has more of both than your average porn flick, which seems to be the only industry which consistently fails to achieve anything it claims to.
Roger, any more doubling back to review more movies you missed while in recovery? I regularly read your reviews after seeing a movie for the first time, and when I rent a 2006/2007 movie that you haven't reviewed, there just seems to be something missing.
With an admirable sense of symmetry, Gero follows these four couples (and a threesome) through six stages of f***ing, which he identifies as prelude, foreplay, sex, interlude, orgasm and afterglow. That seems like a pretty comprehensive list, omitting only Sending Out for Chinese.
Is that pre-prelude or post-afterglow? I'd hate to think I've been doing it wrong all this time.
I take it there is no reason to run any print review until the film has taken a theatrical bow in the United States?
Ebert: The film has opened in Canada, where I have many readers, and several papers take my sydicated column.
This is all very interesting, but honestly I have been waiting for days for your review of the new Werner Herzog-- a film which is dedicated to you! Perhaps another reviewer's quandary?
I just saw the film at Film Forum in NYC and was blown away-- it's stunning, and consistent with Herzog's best work.
Thus, can't wait for the review.
all best,
Dan Quiles
NYC
Ebert: It opens in Chicago July 11. Also see my "Letter to Werner Herzog" at
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071117/PEOPLE/71117002/1023
Hi,
I just saw this film on friday and for the record, there is a lot of sex in this morning. There's pounding and moaning and well, I wouldn't recommend this to any teenager ( as per Solomon Wakeling's comment - YIKES!).
I did find it absolutely amusing. The dialogue was funny and the situations were some that I have been in - and also my friends and boyfriend who came with me. It's definately a film to make you laugh out loud and something I'd totally recommend for an easy night out followed up with drinks and conversation about the movie.
Yes, the roommates, REALLY funny - and definately not for the truly conservative :)
Completely unrelated to this subject. But based on previous black and white discussions in these realms, a must see is the black and white animated movie called Renaissance that was released a couple years ago. Very good.
Hi Roger,
I was wondering if you have ever seen the Canadian show "Kenny vs. Spenny." They did a documentary called "Pitch" (1997) in which you were featured in one scene giving them advice. You came off as kind of mean, which surprised me (but, of course, the tricks people can make when editing). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOHJOOB6XX0&feature=related
You're around the 5:40 mark.
After their recent fame, what was your impression of their documentary? What is your impression of the television show?
Hi Roger,
Happy birthday. Planning to watch any specific movie for this special occasion?
Greetings from Spain.
K, I of course haven't seen the film - I might have grossly under-estimated the appropriate age range. Australia has a different rating system which cuts off at 15 (M) or 18 (R), with a kind of in between level 15+ (MA)with a parent or guardian, which is my guess for where this film would fit. Perhaps "NC-17" has stronger connotations in America than I would automatically have presumed - I learn that it was put in place to replace X-ratings (!). According to IMDB in Finland the film is 15+ and Canada 16+.
Apparently this means:
"These films may contain complex sequences, including violent or erotic elements, as well as certain problematic situations encountered by adults."
Certain problematic situations encountered by adults? The mind boggles.
On a different note, happy birthday, Roger!
The KidsPost (the Washington Post's kids' page) listed the birthdays of well-known people for the week, and my son was very impressed that you were born on the same day and year as Paul McCartney.
Oh, what the f... let's leave the discussions aside for a moment (also, I doubt if this film will ever play somewhere near Calexico, CA or Mexicali, Mexico any time soon, so it's officially become another addition to my to-see-DVDs list): Happy F...ing Birthday, Roger!!!
Appropriate or not, but...
Happy F***ing Birthday! (the bleeped word being 'fulfilling' of course)
"...prelude, foreplay, sex, interlude, orgasm and afterglow. That seems like a pretty comprehensive list, omitting only Sending Out for Chinese."
Roger, is "Sending Out for Chinese" a euphemism for some kind of Asian sexual technique, like the famous (if apocryphal) "Venus Butterfly" from L.A. Law, which included "ordering room service?" Or are you really talking about food? If the former, please elaborate. If the latter, I'll take two from column A...
Ha, Roger comes across great in "Pitch" because he sees through them. Props to Kenny & Spencer for including his insight in their film.
At a panel after the film's opening in Toronto this weekend, it was revealed that even the film makers never expected the title to survive:
Actually, the more I watch it, I think you're right Godard. It's kind of cool seeing how Kenny and Spenny are huge in Canada now since that amateur documentary was made. We'll never know if their movie would have been a hit...
I think by the time you're nineteen you ought to have graduated to a film like Bertolucci's "The dreamers". Since there are few films of that calibre about youth or sex it might be more prudent not to even bother and quell your curiosity on real people, and if you can't find any, go read Radiguet.
Actually the most erotic scene I can think of in any film is the one in "The Last Emperor", also a Bertolucci film, where you see the young Pu Yi's bald head covered in lipstick from the young Empress. I certainly saw that film as a child and it left a lasting, positive impression on me. "She is not my wet nurse - she is my butterfly." Alas.
I have a radical thought on censorship: Shouldn't all art at a minimum level be suitable for children? That is, you might not want them to see it, but if by chance they did, shouldn't work at least keep them from moral danger? If it cannot, isn't it unsuitable for adults as well?
I gave my 11 yr old niece "Grave of the fireflies" after some hesitation, but ultimately she liked it. It is a serious, sad but beautiful film. The difficult part with children is not so much finding what they might enjoy but getting them to watch it in the first place. Without an orientation towards something they are unlikely to want to watch something new.
I can't think of a better film for children then Spielberg's "Artificial intelligence". It is a much better film than I first thought and I think it has more to say about our actual experience of the spiritual life than any other work of art I have encountered. There is a touch of raunch or violence here and there but it is hardly gratuitous and would in all likelihood simply give children some clue as to the mysterious world in which they live. Much better than the similar but blander "Bicentennial man". Or, for that matter, "The Terminator", which is the kind of film I watched as a child.
All Spielberg's films seem to operate on two levels, for children and adults. Even films like "Schindler's List" and "Munich" have scenes involving children which might make the world engaging and comprehensible to them. Again, if I had children I wouldn't want them to see "Schindler's List", but if by chance they did I would be confident that it would not put them in moral harm. I would be more concerned about ethics than content; you can't totally shield children from the world, and you probably shouldn't try, but you can provide them with interpretive principles to help them negotiate the world.
I say this in contemplation of a future where almost anything seems to be accessible through the medium of the internet and where I can't be assured of being able to protect my own children of the horrors and mysteries of the world.
As for teenagers, I suppose my concerns are similar but not so profound. A little pounding and moaning never hurt anyone and might teach them something about biology. My major concern would be: how does the film fit within the moral life, is it demeaning to women, does it create false expectations or give bad advice?
Worst of all is encountering women in real life who seem to have absorbed their ideas about sex from pornography or Hollywood. It is, at best, a poor education, like studying advertising as a guide to reality.
Just to keep the conversation going. As I watched it for a second time (the first being last year at TIFF) I got to thinking that this film would make an excellent play. It is totally dialog driven...the action (and there is some) is secondary.....some of the family stuff coming from HBO is way more explicit.
He was eating cookie dough, not a submarine sandwich.
The use of a vulgarity or one of those "expletive deleted" words in a title is nothing more than an attention-grabbing stunt. It actually serves to demean the work so entitled. I can understand a bunch of college sophomores (or even lesser - a bunch of high school kids) thinking they are cool and oh-so-dangerous-and-edgy for titling something that way, but adults should have advanced beyond the potty-training stage.
And basically, using a word like "fuck" in a title is simply part of potty-training. You use it, you know what it means, you get past it. Needless to say, the film's association with Canada is also a clue to the insipidness of the use of the word. In Canada, where being infinitile is an art form and edginess hardly exists, a word like "fuck" in a title is something they love to giggle about. It's why the Toronto Film Festival is such a bore. 300 movies? Sure, but 250 of them are worthless.
Oh, grow up..H'wood has so few new ideas, fewer gracious, thoughtful insights to the human and spiritual world that it settles for profane, sexist, violent, and "guy" one syllable movies to gain one syllable viewers. The endless use of the "f" word matches the current lock step propensity for "guys" to have stubble beards, frizzy, porcupine hair styles, large long sleeved ( unbuttoned!) shirts, and not tucked in. Plus most male actors mumble...they do not speak coherently....their flat dialogue is uttered in a disinterested fashion as if they have difficultry with their bowel movements.
The Enlish language is bursting with beautiful words of insight and meaning. The casual, continuing use of profanity is just more of the dumbing down the media so thoughtlessly and endlessly spreads in an effort to be "hip" and the sell tickets to a public that is unaware of their desenstivation. Wake up America...you are becoming more common, cruder and mindless and don't even realize it!
I'll admit, the title is what got me to watch the movie too.
I have to admit I cried at the end during the Exes. I was surprised that such a comedic, witty film had such an honest moment that could bring me to tears.
Great movie however I wish the movie took on a more diverse group of "Young" peaple F**king to include differant races or even interracial couples. Being a black man and speaking from this point of view I can tell you that the conversation and simular situation in the movie would be a bit more interesting. There was a point in the movie that showed about 20 seconds of a possiable incounter with an asian chick but it stoped there. I hope who ever reads this dosent think I am saying "Hey! what about the minorites! we F88K too!". it is a comedy thats all but all I am saying is it would have been cool if they sprinkled a little color in it.