"Sex-Positive" is one of those movies that is so bad it borders on surrealism.
There are so many off-putting things about it, so many obstacles the filmmakers put up between you and any enjoyment or investment in their film, that you have to wonder if they aren't doing it on purpose.
Take the music, for example. It is constant and obtrusive and annoying. It's not used to underline dramatic moments in scenes like in a proper movie. Instead it detracts from what you're watching, to the point you sometimes can't hear dialogue because of it.
It doesn't help that the dialogue is also poorly recorded, often with a strange and distracting echo effect.
What is the movie about? The rather thin set-up involves our protagonist, a young woman, being dumped and finding herself in a house in which everyone is either naked or in a state of undress.
I guess it's supposed to be that she comes from a repressive, button-down society and begins to loosen up once surrounded by sexually liberated people, but this character arc is not depicted effectively.
The guy who takes our protagonist to this ethereal sex-house is apparently her love interest, but he doesn't even seem like he is interested in women, so you can't believe anything could ever happen between them.
It should have been a relatively simple matter to show our plucky and sassy protagonist loosening up, discovering sexuality and embracing it. Instead key moments happen off-screen, or aren't communicated to the audience effectively. For example, at first our protag is the only character who is uncomfortable with her nudity. She appears only in panties, but covers her nipples with her forearm, leading the audience to wonder if she's going to show anything. Well, she does, which should have been a key moment in her character's development, and a point of contact with the audience, acknowledging what they were no doubt wondering. Instead, the movie handles her eventual unveiling like it's nothing, like the filmmakers had no idea anyone in the audience would wonder about it.
The direction is also dull and pedestrian, keeping us at a distance from the characters like everything else in the movie does.
Trying to get into this movie, trying to make out the dialogue through the music, trying to find any spark of motivation, gave me a headache.
This could have been an unusually frank and disarming movie about sexuality, like the classic "Shortbus". There is a scene in which a man appears completely naked with three clothed women, who discuss what it might be like to have his anatomy, and ask him to jump up and down and run on the spot. This could have been key to the movie's themes about understanding sexuality and other people's bodies. Instead it's just a sad reminder of what this movie should have done. The cast were totally up for it. Why weren't the filmmakers?
