Lie with Me: Girls just wanna have fun

DIRECTED BY Clement Virgo, 2006

STARRING Lauren Lee Smith (Leila), Eric Balfour (David)
CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong sex, nudity and language
RUN TIME 89 mins approx, Metrodome

COVER QUOTE 'The continuing evolution of art porn' - Hollywood Reporter

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT In the last decade or so, hardcore porn has tried to extend its market by being more female friendly. In a mirroring of that situation, the artcore movie market is trying something similar with films like this.

THE PLOT At a party, Leila shares a bathroom with a guy, David, but ends up pulling someone else, with whom she has sex while David and his on-off girlfriend, Victoria, watch from a parked car, where they, in turn, have sex. Leila becomes obsessed with David; she exposes herself to him and then goes to his flat, where they have sex. They start to date but Leila's anxiety over the break-up of her parents' marriage, and the presence of Victoria, cause problems.

Leila flirts with other men at a club provoking David's jealousy; when they get home he sodomises her. David is then affected by the death of his father, for whom he acted as carer. David and Leila's relationship deteriorates; she has sex with someone else but is unfulfilled. When David sees Leila going to her cousin's wedding, he follows her and is invited to join the party.

THE FILM Lie with Me opens with a close-up of a woman's mouth; as the camera pulls further and further back, the main woman character, Leila, is revealed, pointing a TV remote control and only dressed in a short jean skirt, under which she's wanking herself. It's an absorbing image that doesn't quite succeed in its execution, much like this whole film.

Everyone in Lie with Me is annoying; it looks like a fashion spread, too, filmed in accentuated colours. Sex takes place on artfully arranged rugs; David's room has prints hanging on lines from the ceiling and a L'Atalante film poster on the wall (perhaps a visual pun on the respective directors' names?); when Leila comes to his place, she finds David posed on his bed in the middle of the room, reading Steppenwolf, as drapes blow in the sunlight behind him. If Cosmo did porn films, the result would be something like this (there are lots of condoms everywhere, too).

Scarlet magazine is quoted on the DVD cover saying that Lie with Me is 'everything 9 Songs wanted to be', a dreadful slur on the latter film, which is braver and more interesting in every way. The only area where this film goes further is that the couple at its centre have anal sex but, considering the detail in 9 Songs, you'd hardly expect it to go that far. For all Lie with Me's bluster about a woman trying to act like a man to get what she wants sexually, the anal sex scene is one of subjugation.

This DVD proudly proclaims that it is the 'full uncut UK version' - in BLOCK CAPITALS - but I can't find any record of it having been threatened with cuts in the UK, nor is the BBFC warning as explicit as some (no mention of 'real sex', for instance). The implication is that you're seeing something not afforded to cinemagoers (elsewhere in the world), though I don't think it had a full theatrical release here.

Leila's cousin, who's about to get married, wonders whether it's worth giving up great sex - with an ex - for love, with her fiancé; when David asks Leila whether they should go on a date, Leila replies that she's never been on one. Unfairly, she also asks David whether he has a girlfriend when she has his cock in his mouth, which may explain some of the confusion that ensues over their relationship status.

Lauren Lee Smith is very attractive as redhead Leila, even though the character's banal thoughts and fantasies, presented in voiceover, may want to make you kill yourself: 'Men can do whatever they want... they're not afraid'; 'How do you have sex with someone you're in love with?' Another mantra is 'Don't come'; I don't know how sexy that is.

If that doesn't do it for you, Eric Balfour will, and not in a good way. A desperately drippy presence, it's a relief that he doesn't voice his thoughts in his hopeless, girly voice. One sex scene is dominated by his ridiculous moustache, which is as neatly trimmed as Leila's pubic hair in another. David is supposed to have some depth, presumably, because he cares for his coarse father, though he could simply be under his thumb (David's girlfriend warns Leila, however: 'He has intimacy issues, he needs a mummy'). When Leila flirts and dances with two other men at a club, they appear even gayer than David.

Leila seems to find David as annoying as we do and it's something of a relief when they split up, when his father has died. The couple's superficial beauty is contrasted with the frail flesh of the father, who we see as much of naked as his son. (Leila only speaks with her own father on the phone when she's naked having a bath, which suggests she has issues all of her own.) She fails to deal with the idea that her parents are splitting up and selling the family home.

Lie with Me, which is based on a book by Tamara Berger, believes there is a desperate sexual connection at the heart of David and Leila's relationship, but Henry Miller or Anais Nin they ain't. If we relied on this level of heat in tempestuous couples, the world of art and literature would be a very sorry place. At the end of the film, David makes up with Leila. He admits, rather like 9 Songs' Matt, that he doesn't know where she lives, and perhaps they should get to know each other better. Considering he doesn't seem to have any personality, that would surely be the nail in the coffin for any prospective relationship.

KEY SCENES Chapter 1, 6:21 Leila blows a geeky guy outside a party; David and his girlfriend watch from a parked car. David's girlfriend goes down on him while Leila turns to face the car to have sex. David's girlfriend gets on top of him and Leila and David mimic each other's gestures while having sex with their respective partners.

Chapter 1, 14:25 Leila and David hide in a playground where he crawls into a large concrete tube. Leila follows him and undoes her dress to expose her left breast. When she touches herself, David puts his hand on his crotch but then leaves.

Chapter 2, 21:01 Leila goes to David's flat and starts to suck him off, then they have sex on the floor.

Chapter 7, 1:08:59 Leila picks up the geeky guy and goes back to his place; she forces his face into her crotch, then mounts him on the sofa.

Chapter 7, 1:11:28 Leila desperately tries to wank herself to orgasm while watching a porn film at home.

FURTHER VIEWING Lauren Lee Smith's performance stands alongside those of a couple of other strong women leads in two other recent movies: Kelly Reilly in Puffball (2007) and Elisabeth Röhm in Bernard Rose's The Kreutzer Sonata.

Puffball is the ageing Nicolas Roeg's perhaps valedictory piece, based on a Fay Weldon novel and scripted by her son, Dan. It features some extraordinary sex scenes - not necessarily in a good way, as they include internal shots of ejaculation. The Kreutzer Sonata (2008) shares with Lie with Me the belief that its central characters - Röhm plays alongside the mealy mouthed Danny Huston - are bound in a ferocious sexual tie. Reilly and Röhm are very watchable, though neither film does them any favours.

KEY QUOTE 'I know how to fuck and get what I want' - Leila