A Funny Kind of Love

Other people's sexual proclivities are the subject of this multi-strand Australian first feature, which milks laughter and pathos from the complications of some unusual turn-ons. Writer/director Josh Lawson sets his stories in one ordinary patch of suburbia, and also plays the husband battling manfully to satisfy his wife's rape fantasy - a subject played for edgy comedy and just about getting away with it. Elsewhere, the film is witty, surprising and even rather touching in the way it depicts the emotional consequences of the rarest peccadillos - somnophilia being the pleasure in watching someone sleep, and dacryphilia the frisson of seeing someone cry. On the down side, some of the gags are worked a little too hard (one couple obsessing over the role-playing supposed to save their marriage), while the film also struggles to tie all its threads together. In essence though, a brightly performed, amusing and provocative entertainment that might have you rethinking what constitutes a normal sex life.