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

9 Songs: The Iceman Cometh

DIRECTED BY Michael Winterbottom, 2004

STARRING Kieran O'Brien (Matt), Margo Stilley (Lisa)

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains frequent strong real sex

RUN TIME 70 mins approx, Optimum Releasing

COVERLINE 'Two lovers. One year'

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT Real sex, and an erect penis, shown in all their big-screen glory. Pre-release revelations that star Margo Stilley, a former model, came from a terrifically religious family added to the furore. Hailed by the Guardian as 'the most sexually explicit film in the history of British cinema' - a quote proudly plastered across the DVD cover - Stilley's initial request to remain anonymous in any coverage of the film (she wanted director Michael Winterbottom to refer to her in interview by the name of her character, Lisa) only added fuel to the fire.

THE PLOT Lisa, a 21-year-old American, meets Antarctic geologist Matt at a gig at the Brixton Academy. Over a year they have sex and attend a series of rock concerts. On Matt's birthday, Lisa tells him she is returning to the States, in time for Christmas. The artists they, and we, see performing live are: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (at the beginning and end), the Von Bondies, Elbow, Primal Scream, the Dandy Warhols, Super Furry Animals, Franz Ferdinand and Michael Nyman.

THE FILM I was once lucky enough to go out with a really hot Italian actress. A director she knew had come to London (to direct an opera) and they met for lunch. After the meal it turned out he didn't know anyone else in the city and was free for the afternoon, so she volunteered to keep him company. What would he like to do? There's this highly recommended new film I'd like to see, he answered. OK, what is it? 9 Songs. When they got to the cinema he claimed that he didn't understand English so could she please translate for him? When she kept quiet in the sex scenes, he turned to her and complained, what are they saying? I saw it with another ex, not even at my suggestion.

At the beginning of Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood, the 37-year-old chief protagonist lands in a plane at Hamburg airport when an ersatz version of the Beatles' song sweeps him up in memories of an 18-year-old affair. In 9 Songs, Matt is flying over Antarctica, where he has gone to collect samples of the ice, and remembers his love affair with a young American woman (his character provides the film's voiceover). Through nine sex scenes, and as many clips from live gigs, Winterbottom traces the arc of their year-long relationship. It's an audacious conceit, my favourite of the British director's films and my favourite sex film.

All the emotional ups and downs are here, from the first flush of love, through defining the boundaries of the relationship, discussing exes, boredom, petty arguments to alienation. Sexually the couple pass from the excitement of initial attraction, a weekend away, discussing exes, the condom conversation (do we need one, will we always use it?) through experimentation (a little light bondage, fantasising) to familiarity and frustration. Oh and, never having seen my own on a cinema screen, Kieran O'Brien looks to have a pretty big cock.

It could also be about going out in London, or urban relationships: they meet at a gig and, perhaps fatally for Matt and Lisa, concert-going remains the mainstay of their relationship, they never break out from it (most London couples would do more cinema-, theatre- or exhibition-going but, in the parameters of the film, that wouldn't work as well). It's almost as if they have a loyalty card for slightly dull rock gigs; you can hardly blame Lisa for ducking out of Super Furry Animals one evening.

This leads to another puzzle: filling in the backgrounds of the characters. It is assumed Lisa is a student but she only refers to her shiftwork. Though we never meet any of their friends - this is an entirely hermetic relationship - we are shown Matt's work, examining the frozen cores he brings back from Antarctica. They only have sex in his flat, a fact which is made explicit at the end: he visits her digs for the first time when she leaves London. (The Notting Hill-ish setting of her apartment could serve as confirmation of the implication that she's a trustafarian type slumming it for a year.)

The ice Matt examines can be 4km deep and half-a-million years old; it is, he tells us, the 'planet's memory'. Antarctica is a void: 'claustrophobia and agoraphobia in the same place, like two people in a bed.' She only gives him a week's notice that she is returning to the USA (to complete her studies?) but urges: 'Sometimes you have to have faith in people.'

KEY SCENES Chapter 2, 7:48mins O'Brien goes down on Stilley in the kitchen; the three-minute scene outlines their domesticity but also Lisa's demanding (sexual) nature. She's not shy to say what she wants and is willing to take the lead in their (again, sexual) relationship. The music on the soundtrack is by Michael Nyman, foregrounding the ending of the film and setting 9 Song's elegiac tone.

Chapter 5, 26:37 The film's high point arrives when the couple are lounging in bed together. Stilley reads aloud an extract from Michel Houellebecq's novel Platform, which was also something of a cause célèbre at the time. O'Brien ties Stilley's hands above her head to the bed frame and blindfolds her before playing with her and having sex. At nearly six minutes, it's probably the film's longest single scene; it's followed by the Dandy Warhols performing You Were the Last High and it's pretty much downhill for the couple's relationship from here on.

Chapter 6, 38:00 To the plaintive sound of Goldfrapp's Horse Tears the couple visit a strip club. Lisa gets a nude dance (from a woman) and Matt walks out; at home, Lisa uses a vibrator on herself. She is, we're told, 'egotistical, crazy'.

Chapter 8, 57:54 The final sex scene is the most exposing of the whole film as Stilley rides O'Brien. That night they see Michael Nyman performing his 60th birthday concert at the Hackney Empire.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT Stilley had a period where she seemed to mainly hang around in popular London nightclubs, including Maya. She found it difficult to overcome the notoriety of her role but has been cast in other films; she was reported to have left WE, a film about Wallis Simpson, following differences with director Madonna. O'Brien, who had largely been a TV actor before being cast by Winterbottom, returned in the main to the small screen, including a role in hospital spin-off series Holby Blue.

The hugely eclectic Winterbottom went on to direct Jim Thompson adaptation The Killer Inside Me, among others. The film again courted controversy by pushing the boundaries of sexual violence on screen; the beatings meted out by central character Lou Ford (excellent Casey Affleck) on his paramours (Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson) are unpalatable. While Winterbottom seems to be saying, 'Look, this is the sort of violence depicted in these genre movies you enjoy', much still has to be implied.

KEY QUOTE 'Don't wave that belt in my face. You know I got hurt once - by waving a belt in my face' - Lisa, laughing

BONUS CURIO The trailer seems to have takes not included in the film; it also states the action takes place over a single summer, not a year.