In Fintan Connolly’s new film, set in footloose modern Ireland, the trouble with sex is that love still gets in the way, writes Gerry McCarthy

 

Erica Jong, the feminist writer who came to prominence in the 1960’s as part of what is still quaintly called the counterculture, is fond of complaining about the phrase for which she is likely to be remembered, to the neglect of everything else. “They will,” she has said ”put ‘zipless f***’ on my tombstone”.

 

Certainly it has a brevity for which any memorial stonemason would be thankful. And the permissive attitude it encapsulated has proved pervasive in the 35 years since it first saw the light of day, despite its impenetrability. It was zipless, Jong explained once in her hippy-chick patois, “because when you came together zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. For the true, ultimate zipless A-1 f***, it was necessary that you never got to know the man very well.”

 

Enter Fintan Connolly, whose new film, TROUBLE WITH SEX, is Jong for the Celtic tiger cubs, its central characters variations of the staple archetypes of feminist fiction. The woman is a corporate lawyer, aggressive and self assured. When she meets a man she fancies she isn’t shy about letting him know. And she expects to get down to business quickly.

 

He is reticent and moody, careful with his feelings. He doesn’t want to leap into bed with someone he barely knows. He is looking for a relationship; she is looking for a fling. And when he brings up the L-word she freaks out.

 

Connolly says that it is “a simple, adult love story.” Renee Weldon plays Michelle, the lawyer. She breaks up with her previous boyfriend – who comes from the same corporate culture – and meets the very different Conor, played by Aidan Gillen. He runs a small family pub with his father.  Despite various misunderstandings, a relationship develops.

 

The trouble with sex, the film says, is that you can fall in love. But this is only one aspect of a deeper problem: sexual activity is not easily disconnected from emotional entanglement. Traditionally, men were able to do this more readily, which has made them prime consumers of pornography. Women, supposedly, were more prone to emotional involvement and attachment.

 

There was a time when “adult” was a synonym for pornography but this has changed. The cardboard characters and sexual acrobatics of porn are now seen as essentially juvenile, and anything but adult. The quality Connolly has tried to catch is a deeper, more nuanced look at contemporary relationships. Sex is part of the package, certainly, but it is far from being the whole story.

 

“The idea”, he says, “was to concentrate on a two-hander, a man-woman relationship. And to try to develop a contemporary female character. I’m not knocking other movies, but Irish female characters are thin on the ground.”

 

This has more to do with the shape of the movie business in general than with any kink in the Irish filmmaking psyche. Hollywood churns out mega-budget action movies and knockabout farces aimed at teenage males: with a few high profile exceptions, serious roles for women are rare.

 

The struggle between art and commerce is over, and art lost. Until recently the annual crop of Irish films included a few more or less artistic efforts, which generally failed to get a theatrical release and wound up on the festival circuit. These simply aren’t being made any longer: the only films that go into production now are those that have distribution deals tied up in advance.

 

Connolly describes himself as a pragmatist. He is attuned to the new reality, and will compromise to get a film made. But he clings to the idea of film as a grown-up medium, capable of handling grown up themes.

 

He begins by breaking one of the cardinal rules taught by every screenwriting course. Movies are supposed to have a very tight structure, where the protagonists encounter obstacles and eventually overcome them. With Connolly there is no enemy, no single or simply defined obstacle in the lovers’ path. Instead there are the ups and downs of a real relationship, the burgeoning gestures of trust, the casual evasions that gradually turn into lies.

 

Connolly’s previous film, Flick, was a cruder, more laddish affair about a drug deal gone wrong. What it had in common with Trouble With Sex is the interest in the hidden life of contemporary Dublin. Both films focus on the glossy surface appearance of the city, before burrowing into it to reveal complex characters and tangled webs of interaction.

 

Flick dealt with greed, at a time when the Irish economy had taken off: it was one of the first films to tackle the contradictions of the tiger economy. Trouble With Sex is less frantic, more composed. The society it observes is no longer in a state total flux. But roles have shifted and relations between men and women are far from clear.

 

The central characters, Conor and Michelle, are drawn from life. They mix Connolly’s observations of contemporary Dublin mores with improvisations and nuances brought by the actors. Conor’s shyness and reticence, and his apparent lack of interest in casual sex, indicate a new take on an old archetype.

 

“He’s tentative,” says Connolly, “moody, not a barrel of laughs. You’re establishing a certain type of Irish male.”

 

The traditional image of the Irish male was of a man more attracted to drink and fighting than to women. That stereotype may have declined, but traces remain. Conor’s character has elements of it, mingled with what we recognise as a new male sensitivity. Despite running a bar and relaxing easily into its boozy bonhomie, he is never going to be one of the lads.

 

On the surface, Michelle is a modern, independent woman. Yet here too we see traces of older character types. She meets Conor on the rebound, after the break up of a previous relationship. Worried about potential jealousy, she withholds this information from the new man in her life. She compartmentalises her life, trying to keep its various elements apart. But her attempt to maintain a wall between sex and love is doomed.

 

Paradoxically, these characters work because they are stereotypes. But they are self-conscious stereotypes rather than cardboard cut-outs. Each of them engages in a private tug-of-war between inner feelings and outer roles. Each is confused by the headiness of the affair: it creates a tension between their emotions and the role-playing both feel obliged to indulge in.

 

Connolly’s achievement lies in capturing the subtleties of a relationship; he succeeds in creating two complex and original characters whose interactions are never predictable. The film, much of it shot by night, looks exquisite. As a study of contemporary sexual conundrums, it does its job well. Without being consciously artistic, Connolly shows that it is still possible for an Irish film to tackle adult themes.

 

The problem lies in the film’s internal balance. When a director ignores the narrative rulebook, there is an onus to find an original way of making the film attractive and engaging. Connolly does not quite pull this off. The focus on the lovers is necessarily intense, but the margins are blurred.

 

 

When Trouble With Sex focuses on Gillen and Weldon, it works. But in fleshing out their respective backgrounds, Connolly devotes too much attention to superfluous detail. Michelle’s world of corporate backstabbing is contrasted too obviously with the cosy familiarity of Conor’s bar. We can see from the start that the film is about the attraction of opposites, but the polarity does not need to be spelt out so literally.

 

 

Flawed, though it is, Trouble With Sex is proof that a film can be commercially viable without being loud or juvenile. Cinema, driven by special effects, has moved away from naturalism. Connolly shows that catching a reflection of contemporary life remains a valid aspiration for a film-maker. The mirror may be clouded in places, but we still need to see our reflection from time to time