Let's Talk About Sex

Cast: Troy Beyer, Paget Brewster, Randi Ingerman, Joseph C. Phillips, Michaline Babich, Tina Nguyen
Director: Troy Beyer
Producer: Deborah Ridpath
Screenplay: Troy Beyer
Cinematography: Kelly Evans
Music: Michael Carpenter
U.S. Distributor: Fine Line Features

Let's Talk about Sex is a great name for marketing purposes. Provocative titles that include words like "sex", "nudity", "naked", and "breast" are guaranteed to draw in a few audience members purely on the basis of prurient interests. (Imagine the potential of a movie name that uses all four of those terms…) As far as this movie is concerned, it's going to need whatever help it can get from the title, because the actual content – documentary-style soundbytes wrapped in a painfully melodramatic female empowerment story – is lost in the realm connecting the embarrassing with the irritating and the pointless.

For her debut feature behind the camera, Troy Beyer (who penned the script for B.A.P.S.) wears a trio of hats: writer, director, and actor. Using sports terminology, she's oh-for-three. Beyer the screenwriter has authored a script so awful that it's hard to believe she found a producer willing to shepherd it through to the end and actors willing to speak the lines (although all of them are screen newcomers). Beyer the director seems intent upon making the audience motion sick, refusing to let her camera rest for a moment while relying on MTV-like quick cuts and Lazy Susan shots. (If you think everything is spinning, it's not something you had to drink before entering the theater.) Finally, Beyer the actor has a range that could charitably be called limited. Frequently, it's more rewarding to observe an inanimate background object than her.

Let's Talk about Sex follows the romantic misadventures of three roommates: Jazz (Beyer), Michelle (Paget Brewster), and Lena (Randi Ingerman). All are poorly-developed characters, but it doesn't matter much. Since they're based on well-understood stereotypes, we know everything about them before their first scene together is over. Jazz is a dissatisfied advice column writer whose long-term relationship with the perfect man, Michael (Joseph C. Phillips), has hit the skids. Wanting to change her career, she auditions to host a local talkshow, called "Girltalk," but is required to produce a sample program before the producers will give her the time slot. Michelle is afraid of intimacy, so she dates only boy-toys she can dominate. Her life has become a litany of emotionally-cold sexual experiences. Lena, despite her sultry beauty, has a self- esteem problem that causes her to become involved in relationships with men who leave her waiting by the phone, or who show up at 4 am for a quick round of sex-without-strings.

All of this is pretty uninspired material and Beyer makes it worse by heaping on huge portions of melodrama. There are scenes that caused me to wince with embarrassment, and, during one particularly sudsy sequence (when all three women are sobbing while doing housework – come on, there can't be that much dirt), I thought I was going to burst out laughing. Beyer is clearly trying to manipulate the audience, but I'm reasonably certain that's not the reaction she was attempting to achieve. Honestly, although the premise for the film doesn't sound all that interesting, the execution turns it into an 82-minute nightmare. Any potential value – that of learning what women think and talk about when men aren't around – is eliminated by the manner in which Beyer chooses to construct her feature.

Let's Talk about Sex includes dozens of quick interview snippets with women that Beyer encountered while she was combing Florida's beaches. (These are a lot like the material used to bridge segments in the HBO series Real Sex.) Instead of going for even a scintilla of depth or intelligence during the "documentary portion" of her film (which is to be used in the "Girltalk" demo), Beyer chooses the best soundbytes dealing with sexual kinks, dislikes, skills, and thrills. The women say a few words about everything from their favorite sexual positions to the ego-bruising experience of being rejected by men to whether size does matter (and they ain't talkin' about Godzilla). We also learn the kinds of things that inventive girls can do with cucumbers, toothbrushes, and doorknobs. There's plenty of gratuitous skin, including a couple of sensually-filmed, soft core interludes and an oddly-placed fantasy sequence. When Beyer interviews a group of women about their sexual dislikes, one responds that she wishes she could remove her top and enjoy a casual meal with her friends. Through the magic of movies, the next thing we see are these four bare-breasted women sitting around a table. Perhaps the most ludicrous thing Beyer's camera captures, however, is the sight of two women with gargantuan chests bouncing off of one another. An unusual moment like that might be enough to get Russ Meyer to shell out the full price of admission.

While there is a certain minimal entertainment value in the interview segments, there's none in the main story, which combines the flaws of predictability, bad writing (the dialogue is filled with more howlers than I can possibly list here), and unconvincing acting. Let's Talk about Sex has the amateurish feel of a film school project, not a commercial (albeit low-budget) feature. Late night cable TV movies are often better made, but at least they're less pretentious about their intentions. In the production notes, Beyer loftily proclaims that the reason for her film is to "show the honest, sometimes provocative, truth of certain women's lives." Frankly, however, I can't think of one "truth" revealed in this film that I haven't been exposed to before. (Those in search of a movie where women talk frankly to one another about sex might rent the equally salaciously-titled, but more substantial, Live Nude Girls). And, although Let's Talk about Sex fails as a serious drama, it's equally ineffective as an exploitation/titillation flick. The film takes itself too seriously to attain the necessary level of camp. Consequently, it doesn't work as much of anything, except as filler for theaters with more screens than movies.

© 1998 James Berardinelli