Dir.
Chris Waitt, 2008/UK, 94 mins Cast: Chris Waitt, Alexandra Boyarskaya, Danielle McLeoad, Review by Carol Allen It takes a brave man
to publicly examine the material of the title and one has
to give Waitt credit for his courage if nothing else. The
film is ostensibly a documentary, initiated when Chris gets
dumped by his latest girlfriend, the latest in a long line
of disastrous relationships and he decides to go back over
his life and ask all his exs, "What
did I do wrong?" It's very entertaining and jolly and
Chris comes over initially as so self deprecating and funny
that you wonder at first how come he’s had such bad luck with girls – until
you see him interacting with them that is and hear some of
his history and some of the questions he asks. He really is
a total slob – the sort you suspect of having unwashed
coffee cups lying around his flat for so long that they grow
mould and who wears who the same pair of tatty jeans every
day of his life. In some ways it comes over as a bit of a home
movie/video blog with its cheerfully careless jump cuts, often
ropy quality and on the hoof camera work. Some of it is clearly
real documentary, like the interviews with most of the ex girl
friends – the one with the girl he admits is the love
of his life, who now has a long term partner and a child, is
really touching. Some of the others though he admits are reconstructions
using an actress for legal reasons, because the real ex girl
friend refused to take part, but one also wonders how much
of the other material is unacknowledged reconstruction. There's
an early and very funny phone call between him and his producer,
who obviously thinks the idea is a non-starter, shot entirely
from Chris's end, which one suspects took place in real life
long before he shot a foot of video. Perhaps the again very
funny sequence of him taking Viagra and then going round the
streets asking girls to have sex with him is for real but when
he subsequently gets arrested, the question arises as to why
the police don't arrest his camera operator too, rather than
just allowing themselves to be filmed. In another sequence,
where he goes on a first date with a potential new girlfriend,
one wonders how naturally the girl can be behaving, when she
has a camera pointed in her face. In the later scenes the film is taken over by Chris's big
problem with girls, which is his sexual dysfunction. This includes
exceedingly graphic sequences of him with a sexual counsellor
and a hooker specialising in sado-masochism, which at times
get a bit uncomfortably frank. And there is one question left
unanswered for no good reason, in that Chris, a Londoner, spends
much of the film in Scotland, where many of his exs come from.
But he never tells us why he sowed so many of his wild oats
there. It's all fascinating stuff for anyone, who's ever had problems
with their relationships, though even at only 94 minutes it
does seem a bit overlong. As we leave Chris at the end of the
film, he's just hooked up with a quirky and interesting Russian
girl. Let's hope he's finally met the lady, who can deal with
him and his funny little ways. |
