(Canada, 98 min.)
Dir. Sean Garrity, Writ. Jonas Chernick
Starring: Jonas Chernick, Emily Hampshire, Sarah Manninen,
Vik Sahay.
Forget bananas, forget strawberries, and forget lady fruit.
Cantaloupe is the sexiest fruit you’ll ever taste. The juicy melon gets a
sensual lick in Sean Garrity’s hilarious My
Awkward Sexual Adventure as a meek accountant named Jordan (Jonas Chernick)
undergoes a crucial taste test to please his would-be fiancée. The sweetest
flavour of the cantaloupe is how it tunes Jordan’s palette to match sex with
love, something that’s been lacking in his relationship for some time.
Jordan decides to get some training in his libidinous ways
during a trip to Toronto. In the big city, he hopes that his man-slut friend,
Dandak (Vik Sahay) will teach him the key to sexual confidence, but it’s really
a woman’s touch that Jordan needs to cure his problem. Enter Julia, said
stripper whom Jordan befriends on a drunken night at the strip club. Impressed
by Julia’s confidence, plus her living room full of dildos, condoms, whips, and
chains, Jordan proposes a teacher-student relationship.
“There’s a difference between strippers and prostitutes,”
Julia quips back.
Julia is swayed nevertheless thanks to her looming debt and
her dream of quitting the metal pole to open a wine bar. Clothes stay
on—Julia’s, anyways—as she takes Jordan on an awkward—very awkward—sexual
adventure to teach him all the tricks that will keep Rachel at his side forever.
Whether it’s a trip to a massage parlour to perfect his stamina or a
cross-dressing strut down Church Street, Jordan’s hilarious misadventures with
Julia are a mixed bag of embarrassment and empowerment.
Julia’s effect on Jordan is pretty clear through their
carnal crash course, but, back in Winnipeg, Rachel enjoys her own sexual adventure
that seems to miss the point of its own fumbly experimentation. Rachel, an
uptight bitch, lacks in her sexual escapades what Julia’s lessons for Jordan
teach him: doing “more” in the bedroom doesn’t necessarily equal a better love
life. Julia and Jordan don’t even need to strip down to get past the barrier of
sexual insecurity that Jordan’s built around himself in order to please Rachel.
Although the adventure veers down a predictable path,
Garrity (Blood Pressure) stages some
riotously ballsy scenes between Chernick and Hampshire that should have
audiences in stitches. Hampshire (Cosmopolis)
is especially funny as Julia, bringing a sharp, sexy screen presence to offset
Chernick’s appropriate blandness as Jordan. My
Awkward Sexual Adventure, which made TIFF’s list of “Canada’s Top Ten” last
year, is one of the funnier sex comedies to hit the frigid North in a while. Smart,
awkward, sexy, and sweet, My Awkward
Sexual Adventure is as modest as it is brazen, though, since some of the
funniest moments are fully clothed endeavours. It’s racy, raunchy, and bold,
too, so prudish viewers might blush a little, unless they’re taking notes.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
My Awkward Sexual
Adventure is currently playing in select theatres across Canada.