Public Sex

Astonishing that this was the only British film reckoned worthy of a slot in the Tiger Competition at Rotterdam 2009. Programming the film at all was a baffling move, but to position it in such a prestigious slot is an embarrassment for all concerned.

It's a rubbishy, mirthless Brit-com that's opportunistic and exploitative, but without any of the positives of old-school "exploitation cinema."

Slim but convoluted plot hangs on the illicit sexual activity 'dogging' - semi-public in-car coitus - a practice that made some salacious UK tabloid headlines a couple of years back.

Here it becomes the saucy/seedy pretext for a sloppily-scripted, tut-tutting exercise in larkish prurience, involving various feckless young adults (one of them a priapic Geordie satyr played by newcomer Richard Riddell, who deserves much better material) in and around the Newcastle region.

NB : Given the location and subject-matter, surely 'Go Forth, Tyne Dogger' would have been a better title.