What would be the best thing to do on a date-less Friday evening when one does not feel like going home early but too late to call up friends for drinks? Why not catch a film entitled ‘No Sex Last Night‘?
Soon after I sat down in the screening room and glanced around, I realized that date-less-on-a-Friday-evening-guy like me was a minority in the audience. Many came in couple or gang. It felt like … any other movie showing.
When I checked-in with Foursquare together with a picture of the ticket showing the film title, which was shown on my linked Facebook timeline instantaneously, it naturally invited some candid comments from two close friends.
So far, the evening engagement had been real and rational. Comprehensible too.
I obviously had not heard of the co-creators, Sophie Calle and Greg Shepherd before. As the film unfolded, I found myself asking more and more:- was this a scripted journey or not.
The turns of events and the characters along the journey were too impulsive to be scripted. Yet, their comments on each other were too honest for real couple in relationship – not to mention that they were planning to end the journey by getting married.
As Sophie counted the number of evenings they spent sharing a motel bed without physical intimacy (hence the title of the film), the struggles and searching by both on their real needs of the proposed marriage snowballed. The nearer their journey got to Las Vegas, the stronger one sensed that this was not going to be a they-love-each-other-deeply-and-live-happily-ever-after story. Yet, I wonder how many audience find themselves in similar journey before.
They finally reached the point of having to confront each other for the actual decision when they reached Las Vegas. She tried helped them making the decision by proposing that they would stay in a luxury hotel if they got married. Otherwise, another motel. They chose a motel eventually.
When they woke up the next morning, the first thing they said to each other was to get married. There is nothing as flickering and unpredictable as human minds. The recording of the drive-through wedding chapel where they got married was at time comical but deeply moving. As Sophie said in the ending sequence of the film, they did try their best to make the relationship work despite it not survived many years after the journey.
Is this art? Is this the best way to make art? That is probably the question for the audience.
It was a great way to spend a date-less-Friday-evening. As I walked out of the screen room, I thought.
