Intrigue

A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness and intimacy with his potential true love.

Jon Martello objectifies everything in his life: his apartment, his car, his family, his church, and, of course, women. His buddies even call him Don Jon because of his ability to pull "10s" every weekend without fail. Yet even the finest flings don't compare to the transcendent bliss he achieves alone in front of the computer watching pornography. Dissatisfied, he embarks on a journey to find a more gratifying sex life, but ends up learning larger lessons of life and love through relationships with two very different women.—SophiaLB

Jon Martello is a young Italian American and modern-day Don Juan living in New Jersey, with a short list of things he cares about: "my body, my pad, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls, my porn." Though he has a very active sex life, he is more sexually satisfied by viewing pornography and masturbating, which he claims allows him to "lose himself." On a night out with his two best friends, Bobby and Danny, Jon sees Barbara Sugarman, a young Jewish woman from a more affluent background. Although she finds him interesting, she declines his offer for a one-night stand. He tracks her down on Facebook and invites her to lunch. There is mutual attraction, but Barbara insists on a long-term courtship, which proceeds for over a month without sex. She encourages Jon to take night classes to get an office job outside the service industry, and Jon indulges her love for romance movies, which he usually dismisses as unrealistic fantasy. They meet each other's families and Jon's parents love her..

Jon Martello is a young Italian-American bartender and modern-day (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) living in New Jersey. Jon notes everything in modern America is presented in a hyper sexual manner. Women are presented in a sexual sub-context at every occasion be it selling cars or in a boardroom.

Jon is a modern-day Don Juan, and enjoys his independent life, which consists of working out, caring for his apartment, driving his 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, going to church with his family, engaging in a casual sex life, and excessively masturbating to hardcore pornography. Don Juan is a legendary, fictional Spanish nobleman and philanderer, a symbol of sexual conquest.

Although he has an active sex life with women he meets at nightclubs, he looks at pornography on the Internet habitually, preferring it to sex. Jon finds sex complicated. He likes blow jobs, but many women don't oblige him even after he does down on them. Jon finds wearing a condom very restrictive. He doesn't like the missionary position at all, as the breasts are all flat, and one cannot see anything other than the face, and then he has to do all the work. Jon has a routine about pornography, and he loses himself for a few minutes during his pornography experience, as he is able to shut out the outside world.

Jon remains in close touch with his family Jon Martello Sr (Tony Danza), Angela (Glenne Headly) and sister Monica (Brie Larson) and cares for them. Jon's best friends are Bobby (Rob Brown) and Danny (Jeremy Luke).

During a typical night out with his two best friends, Jon sees Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson), a beautiful woman from an affluent background. Although she finds him interesting, he fails to pick her up for a one-night stand. After failing with Barbara, Jon picks up another voluptuous woman at the bar and takes her home for a night of sex. Jon becomes interested in Barbara due to his rare failure, hoping that sex with her will be more satisfying than his usual hookups. Bobby warns Jon that Barbara does not look like the one-night stand type and that he is stepping into a long game. Jon asks her out after finding her on Facebook.

Barbara wants to know how Job found her, and he lies that Barbara was drunk that night and gave him her name. Barbara asks Jon to always tell her the truth. The attraction is mutual, but Barbara insists on a traditional long-term courtship, which proceeds for over a month without sex. She encourages him to take night classes to get an office job outside the service industry. Jon works at a restaurant as a waiter and has no real skills, and Jon indulges her love for romance movies, which he usually dismisses as unrealistic fantasy. They meet each other's friends and families, and Jon's parents are immediately smitten by Barbara and hope they will marry.

Eventually, they have sex, but as with other women, Jon is dissatisfied and gets up while Barbara sleeps, to watch pornography in the other room. Barbara catches him and is shocked that he would do such a thing. He denies that he watches pornography and claims it was a joke sent to him by a friend.

Their relationship resumes, with Jon continuing to watch pornography, but doing so primarily outside his apartment, where Barbara is often around. He is caught watching a video on his cell phone before a class by Esther (Julianne Moore), a middle-aged woman who attempts to apologize for an earlier awkward incident in which Jon encountered her weeping by herself at the college. Jon politely brushes her off.

Jon takes great satisfaction in cleaning his apartment. Barbara continues to assert control over him, insisting that cleaning his own apartment, a task Jon finds personally satisfying, is not manly. One night Barbara looks at the browser history on his computer, confronts him with proof that he has been continuing to compulsively watch pornography, and ends their relationship.

Jon tries to return to his old lifestyle, but it's not the same. Esther continues to reach out to Jon, trying to offer him the benefit of her experience, and lends him an erotic video that she believes has a more realistic depiction of sexual relations. Jon watches an increased amount of porn and becomes emotionally withdrawn and erratic which leads to an incident of road rage. His friend persuades him to finish his college class, where he sees Esther again.

Jon responds by initiating a sexual encounter in her parked car. She asks why he loves porn, and he reveals that he gets "lost" in porn in a way he does not with a partner and has been consuming porn since he was a kid. Jon insists he is not addicted to porn, but when he tries masturbating without it for a week as Esther suggests, he is unable to.

Esther says porn has given Jon a skewed idea of what real sex is, and he does not intimately connect with his partners because he focuses merely on his own satisfaction. After suggesting they take a bath together at her home, Esther starts crying and does not join him. She reveals that her husband and son died in a car crash fourteen months prior. Their emotional connection deepens their intimacy, and Jon experiences truly satisfying sex for the first time.

At confession, Jon tells his priest he has stopped watching porn, and though he had premarital sex with Esther, it felt special and unlike his previous connections, he is disillusioned when the priest does not acknowledge his substantial improvement. Jon finally tells his family about his breakup with Barbara. While his parents are upset, his sister Monica bluntly tells them that Barbara clearly only wanted to date someone she could control. Jon meets with Barbara and apologizes for lying to her, but asserts that her expectations were demanding of him and unattainable. She insists that a man should make any sacrifice for a woman he loves and tells Jon not to call her again.

As neither of them is interested in conventional love or marriage, Jon and Esther happily begin dating and "lose" themselves when being intimate.