Canucks doing it

>>Young People Fucking is a light,
episodic take on getting it on

by MARK SLUTSKY

Well, you have to hand it to them for the title. It may reek a little of desperation, but calling a movie Young People Fucking is a pretty smart way to get audiences to actually see a Canadian movie. Shameless, sure, but it’ll probably generate more ticket sales than a handful of Genies ever could.

Directed and co-written (with Aaron Abrams) by feature film first-timer Martin Gero, Young People Fucking consists of five interwoven stories of sex and love, each taking place over the course of one night and each broken into six bite-size vignettes: prelude, foreplay, sex, interlude, orgasm and afterglow.

The stories pretty much cover all the romantic bases: The Couple. The Exes. The Roommates. The Friends. The First Date. Each couple (or, in the case of The Roommates, trio) deals with their own particular sexual or romantic conflict, and each, as the title promises, gets it on. (Though “young” may be a bit of a stretch as everyone here looks to be in their 30s or at least late 20s.)

Like the title, it’s a good, punchy gimmick that makes Young People Fucking a lot more watchable than it might have been had the stories been told in a more conventional rom-com way; continually jumping from scenario to scenario emphasizes the movie’s strengths and smoothes over the less successful stuff. Not all of the episodes work as well as others; “The First Date” goes for a twist that’s more bewildering than startling.

Each story is set in one location, usually an apartment—and some in one room alone—and it gets to feeling claustrophobic, like a series of short sitcom segments.

But for what it’s worth, Gero makes good use of a fairly limited palette. The actors seem game and while their performances aren’t models of subtlety, they seem like they’re having fun and keep the script’s humour intact without overdoing it.

Young People Fucking is true to its title, in content and tone, and that’s just fine, though it may have worked better as a TV show. But to be honest, it’s nice to see a Canadian movie about sex that’s light and funny, and not a tedious, tortured psychodrama.

Young People Fucking opens
this Friday, June 13

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