Better Than Sex

There's a limit to the number of times you can watch a couple having intercourse without asking yourself if the act deserves the attention.

That limit is well exceeded in what's almost a two-hander - though "hands" aren't the extremities given most to do in this feature which opens the Seventh London Australian Film Festival at the Barbican.

It's about a couple of strangers who meet at a party, go to her place for a one-night stand, and stretch their action over three days until a casual pick-up becomes an intimate relationship. David Wenham and Susie Porter throw off their kit from the word go and, though it's odd how director Jonathan Teplitzky never catches them full-frontally nude, we get to know the other side of them very well indeed. The Certificate 18 is earned by the time they've abandoned bedsheets for bath tub and a posture that requires a snorkel.

Their tête-à-tête is raunchy without being obscene - unusual for Australians - and the film varies the physical intercourse by allowing the characters' thoughts to break through on the soundtrack, or in straight-to-camera interviews in ways that often contradict what they're getting up to. Less successful is a chorus of his-and-her friends' commentaries, and least successful of all is a cab driver with nothing to do except play Cupid to the couple.

As well as frequently wearing no clothes, the stars wear no makeup. This is fine, up to a point: the point when you notice the risks they've run in the antipodean sun. After you've witnessed such prolonged exposure of the flesh, what you are left thinking about is not safe sex, but sun block.

Better Than Sex
Cert: cert18