Worth: $10.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sally Phillips, Erik Thomson, Tasma Walton, Alexander England, Caroline Brazier, Roz Hammond, Ryan Johnson, Josh Thomson
Intro:
... reductionist ...
There’s a clever visual device in director Renée Webster’s debut feature script, How to Please a Woman. At key points in the narrative, including the opening sequence, we see a group of women swimmers, their strong active bodies striking out through the emerald water. The cinematography by Ben Nott (Buckley’s Chance, Danger Close) and the general style of the film, create a distinctive Aussie environment with a fresh colour palette that is nice to look at.
Once on land, the women are in a beach shower room. No longer simply at one with nature, they are back in the social, cultural world of negative body image, ageism, and roles that are less than empowering. The main character Gina (Sally Phillips) is shown as an unfulfilled, smart woman in a job surrounded by the less competent, and especially under the power of a sexist, ageist boss. He can’t take his eyes off the younger office assistant with big breasts, and he fires Gina regardless of her work skills.
Cut to Gina at home laboriously and miserably cleaning the house. But it’s her birthday and her friends have organised a treat. When stripper Thomas (Alexander England) arrives on her doorstep, she finds the biggest turn on is to have him do the cleaning for her while she kicks back and admires his body.
The premise of the film is a deep one. What do women want, really? What aren’t they getting from the men in their lives, or why can’t they get a man at all? Tackling these questions through comedy is no easy task.
Webster, who has directed on several TV series including Aftertaste and The Heights, puts a lot of ideas out there and uses a multitude of characters to illustrate certain points. It’s all spread rather thin, and the light comedy genre means that these same sketchy characters have to carry a raft of scenes intended to amuse. Unfortunately, the amusement rests in certain cliches. There’s the disconnected, controlling husband, the boorish boss, the parade of Gina’s friends who are hungry for sex and attention, etc.
The throughline is Gina’s story, as she goes from oppressed and repressed to fulfilled. No spoilers here, it’s inevitable from the early scenes where the outcome will land.
The most troubling element of the film is the group of three male removalists and their kindly boss Steve (Erik Thomson). They are childish, unreconstructed in the extreme, reminiscent of those groups of lads that regularly appear in beer/not-beer ads; boorish and monosyllabic. There’s an attempt to give Thomas a back story of sorts, with a pregnant ex he still holds a torch for, but it’s wrapped up in a couple of brief token moments.
The risqué scenes are light indeed, like the episode with a vibrator. They are generally all surface and over long. We are looking at the skin trade, so perhaps more risqué and edgier comic moments would have felt less trivial?
It’s Snow White and the Four Dwarves, as Gina decides to take over the business and offer cleaning services to women who want the eye candy. It quickly turns out that her female clients want to do more than look when the men turn up at their houses. And this is where things become troublesome. If this were a bunch of not very bright females co-opted into sex work, would it be seen in such a benign light? The script gets around it by assuming the cliche that the men have no problem at all selling sex to strangers.
There is an important sequence where clients meet Gina in a car to give their details and requirements when booking the service. Each character brings a specific issue or penchant by way of illustrating some complexity of women’s desires. In these brief scenes the actors do what they can with the moment, but it turns out reductionist, suggesting fulfilment can be found through a simple prescription.
Of course, the film is pointing beyond the remedy. For example, ‘if I could try a lesbian relationship’ … ‘if I could buy the non-relationship sex so I’m not just left on the shelf in an ageist culture’. Webster makes this the opportunity for women to express some specific lack or appetite in order to address the film theme.
After the regular sex services, the women’s subsequent glow and confidence creates a change of tone, especially in the beach shower room, the location we return to that depicts the world of secret women’s business. The changes in the women suggest that if they can get some power back, it may not be the final fulfilment but a door opening to make other, more liberated choices.
The actors do what they can in the rather long, episodic series of scenes. The two leads have story arcs and their attraction is believable. Thomson as a middle-aged divorced pastry chef is likeable and Phillips is especially good at depicting neurotic despair in the early scenes.
The aerial scenes of the women bathers striking out across the ocean are a lingering image. It’s a pity their journey on dry land doesn’t carry the same strength and hope in exploring the film’s themes.
A great movie. A bunch of us girls enjoyed it immensely. Bugger what the critics say .