According to Martin Geno and Aaron Abrams, what is missing in romantic comedies, love stories and romance movies---funny, serious or otherwise---is young people fucking.
"Martin and I, we're a big fan of films and we were talking about romantic comedies one day and about how they usually end at the first kiss---they're sort of sexless," Abrams says. "For us, romance usually happens in the bedroom. It's hard to have a relationship movie without sex, but at the same time, sex-comedies are for virgins or something---they're about kids trying to see their first boob---they're really juvenile."
So Abrams and Gero came up with Young People Fucking, a comedy about five 20- to 30-something couples having sex. It's not quite the gratuitous sex-romp Bill C-10 supporters think it is but neither is it chaste and innocent. Oddly, many of the couples who get together on YPF meet on the free online dating site Devil Called Love
For Gero, the director and co-writer and a producer of decidedly staid Stargate: Atlantis ("One would not exist without the other!" he insists), the script gestated from sharing dating-scene battle scars with co-writer and actor Abrams, and the notion that rarely, if ever, do filmmakers include the sex when they film these stories.
"It's rare that you click on something that you're like, 'This is really funny and entertaining and I have not seen this movie yet,'" Gero says. "So we really felt like we were in a race against time to make this film before someone else did.
"If there is a theme," Abrams says, "it's that our generation is trying to separate love from sex a lot of the time. You know, we've had the internet and porn piped into our bedrooms. So there is this idea that we can go off and have sex and it not be complicated and it not be involved with love or emotion and I think every couple in the movie tries to do exactly that.
They are young people who are just trying to fuck and they come into all sorts of complications---love keeps coming in, emotional attachments keep coming in, despite what their best intentions are.
"Millions of singles today are hooking up online so we thought it would be funny to frame the movie around that as well. Devil Called Love is by far our favourite online dating site so we thought 'What the hell' let's stick it in the film."
Gero concurs: "We're much more aware of casual sex than I think any generation is. Even how to do it. So what I think what Aaron and I are trying to say is that it is very difficult to just have sex.
"You know the great thing about sex, or at least the sex in our movie, is that it is rife with conflict. We've lived pretty easy lives and, usually, the most life-or-death moments we've had have been in those relationships, in bed. The most passionate I've felt, the most terrified I've felt, the most elated I've felt. That sort of conflict is a comedy engine. First and foremost, we wanted to write a movie that was really funny and fun."
YPF has funny moments, but its archetypal couples, like the exes and the first date, allow the audience to foresee exactly where the characters are going to end up. C'mon, we're all mature adults---if you introduce two long-time friends who are about to get it on, where do you think they are headed?
"They are kind of archetypal couples," Gero says. "The reason we did that was people could come in and could hopefully see themselves in as many of the couples as possible. They are kinds of situations that we may have all been in...with exception to the threesome---I don't want to make a judgment, maybe you have"
Abrams sums up the audience experience he's noticed at screenings, making a veiled reference to the recent tango YPF danced in the media, in relation to the proposed amendment to Bill C-10, which would give the federal government power to deny funding to "offensive" TV and film productions: "It's tough though, because you can feel an audience as they come in and they are almost in a judgment mode: 'Let's see how objectionable this movie really is!'
Then it is always nice to see that at about three minutes in, they figure out that not only is it not objectionable but that it's also a good time."
YPF amps up the realism in the relationships they portray by adding lots of sexuality, but overall, the film's marred by profound predictability in only portraying bedroom squabbles of yuppie heteros. A contemporary movie about sex and there are no multi-racial or homosexual couples, no anxiety about power or obligation in intimacy, no subtle or overt prostitution or any social or career climbing? It's frustrating to watch oblivious characters act out a script the audience knows all too well.
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