Etheral Contraband: ‘In Bed’ and ‘Better Than Sex’

The titles. The promotional posters. They elicit expectation, hinting promise of the pleasures of the pure mechanics of sex, if only at a grade below pornography. Something mildly erotic, but safe enough to avoid wandering behind the black curtain to retrieve. Things still left to the imagination, to some extent, in these films that boil down to two strangers hooking up for casual sex. Evident from the viewer reviews and commentary, it successfully drew in audiences.

A Netflix viewer who wrote a review of the Australian production, Better Than Sex suggested that the film captures an “evolution in relationships”, perhaps supporting that tow-line observation that younger generations have scoffed traditional commitment, existing in a comfortable limbo between physical satisfaction and the avoidance of emotional attachment. But this is nothing new, really. And, despite the so-called sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, and probably even the 1980s, casual sex has once again become taboo. And, what to say about a non-pornographic movie that focuses on it entirely? American films, brimming with political correctness, have taught us that a happy ending means not only acceptance of commitment, but also monogamy, and more specifically with an extremely compatible lover.

Better Than Sex and its Chilean counterpart, In Bed, confront this re-established taboo of casual, consensual sex, doing so in a manner that fuses pure mechanics with intelligent discussion, one free of timidity and self-conscious giggling. In a way, they are generational films. The young couples of these films, both somewhere in their late 20s or early 30s, approach casual sex without guilt. In Bed begins just after two strangers who met when one offered to drive the other home after a party have had sex in a cheap motel. We are party to the grunts and heavy breathing and hints of naked, writhing strangers. That Bruno (Gonzalo Valenzuela) doesn’t know the name of the girl he just slept with (played by actress Blanca Lewin) doesn’t bother Daniella. She is amused by it rather than angered or ashamed. Names just pervert the anonymity and that is what the couples of both films initially seems so desperate to avoid–that messiness. There’s that age old fear of getting hurt. But, like many films where characters share an isolated setting for a significant duration (i.e. The Breakfast Club, Never on Tuesday, Tape), those connections are inevitable, invoking their delusional defenses by impersonalizing their time together. “It’s just fucking,” near-strangers Josh (David Wenham) and Cinthia (Susie Porter) half-heartedly assure themselves as the two grow closer in Better Than Sex.

Better Than Sex is far more light-hearted of the two movies, a trait typical of most Australian comedies and light drama. For one thing, John and Cinthia cite immediately recognizable, but minor, flaws in one another when they first consider the idea of asking the other to have sex with them (it’s done almost that blatantly), but they are remarkably compatible, even to the chagrin critics who argued that the film lacks enough conflict among characters to make it interesting. Both Better Than Sex and In Bed are, to an extent, centered around the pure mechanics of pleasure, but not entirely in an erotic sense. Better Than Sex is set almost entirely in Cin’s apartment. Meanwhile, Bruno and Danielle never abandon the small hotel room in In Bed. These characters exist in a temporary isolation, and in their private world, they carry on freely.

With the exception of minor conflict between Josh and Cin which actually results from the introduction of one of Cin’s flirty friends, there’s is a best-case scenario: two unimposing people who immediately click. And their temporarily private world doesn’t permit much to disturb their harmony. There’s even a cab driver who plays the contingent matchmaker when the characters shy away from each other or get hot-headed. Having spent several days together, the dogging question is what happens when nature photographer Josh moves to London as intended? (Obviously for these types of scenarios to occur, the characters can’t have a full-time day job). Spliced into the narrative is he-said/she-said styled commentary on everything from sex to relationships to observations about the opposite sex. The bold shots, generic clothing, and amusing passing commentary (director Jonathan Teplitzky’s experience was primarily in commercials and music videos) give it a vicarious, mid-90s date movie feel (it was actually released in 2000), adding to the non-confrontational approach. In the end, the movie is reduced to what might be described as mere open conversation about sex, and what comes before and after it.

Director Matias Bize’s In Bed is a little different, its setting more confining, its atmosphere a little darker. The film carries on with a certain bitter honesty and intensity, though equally with some exhaustion and repetition as well. Just as Josh intends to be in town only a few days longer after he meets Cinthia, Bruno will soon be leaving to get his PhD in Belgium while his companion, Daniella, is just days away from her wedding to man who had been abusive towards her in the past. When the grunts and the writhing periodically subside, they drift along in honest, intimate conversation and almost entirely without self-consciousness, carrying on in a way they may not with other people in their lives they share a close relationship with. This almost-entirely private isolation (their cell phones and wallet photos are the outside world’s sole intrusion) is conducive to that willful, unselfconscious exposure, once it’s out there. Revealing themselves once they realize the futility and absurdity of trying to fight it. Presumably out of obligation to protect this person whom he shares not only physical intimacy, but eventually, emotional intimacy as well, Bruno asks Daniella to consider leaving with him.

In Bed, which has been compared to Richard Linkater’s Before Sunrise quite often, is somewhat like a film installation piece, where the viewer serves as the first-person observer (in closer quarters than we typically think of ourselves as movie-goers entering the film’s world) to both the mundane and the exciting. Personal histories, expectations and general complexities are mixed with random anecdotes and passing commentary. The waning excitement and eroticism makes the situation feel so much more real – that people placed in a similar setting, confined to each other in a hotel room with little to separate them than maybe locking oneself in the bathroom, might get bored of the situation and tired of their mate. In which case, if the sex is a good enough distraction, then it is a situation that becomes purely erotic once again.

In Bed doesn’t rely on the fairytale resolution. Josh and Cin were singles with little obligation – she was a dressmaker with an apartment, and he seemed bound for a semi-nomadic lifestyle as a freelance photographer. While they feared the implications of the connections they form when their private world ceases existing, there was in reality, little to keep the two apart. Their happy ending in such an innocuous universe was almost a given. Bruno and Danielle, however, are bound by the realities of their public world, much as the happy ending seems possible at some point in the temporary, shared private world. “You were the break before the rest of my life. And I was the adventure before your trip,” Daniella poignantly concludes. The film avoids the need to resolve everything so neatly, and though the conversation may have been an intimate one, at least at times, between Bruno and Danielle, their imminent separation both provoked it and renders its importance fleeting. In the end, it was casual sex with somewhat interesting, but mostly distracting conversation. A release that was not purely physical.

But, to the vicarious viewer wanting to lose themselves in the affairs of Josh and Cin, and Bruno and Danielle, they certainly serve the purpose, depending on the degree of restraint into the fictional retreat he seeks.