Sleeping With Other People * * * 1/2

I’m glad a woman, Leslye Headland, wrote and directed this film. I mean, if a man wrote some of the scenes in this it might come across as masculine arrogance. And then I’d feel guilty for laughing along with it,  (an empathetic laugh is different from a Bro laugh), and there are a lot of laughs in Sleeping with other People; but there is also a surface to be scratched.

When we first meet Jake and Lainie they have a night together, but that was many years ago in their student years.  They popped each other’s cherry, you might say.

Flash Forward to years later and they meet again - at a sex addicts help group.  Which says a lot about how things have worked out for them.

Soon their friendship is reignited.

Lainie now works as a primary teacher whilst Jake has built some internet business with his friend and just sold it for a lot of money.

Jake and Lainie are actually perfect for one the other but they can't see it or accept it.  And so they remain the best of friends.  They live in fear that sex between them will be the end of a beautiful friendship - and really, neither of them have anyone else in their life who understands them as well as they understand each other.  So they stay good friends whilst they sleep with other people

Among those Lainie sleeps with is Matthew. Lainie has always been obsessed with Matthew.  God knows why. It’d be hard to find a more unattractive man. He’s a successful, condescending gynaecologist in desperate need of an image makeover.  But she crawls back to him time after time. Probably because she can't have him.  He’s a married man.  But she visits him and he has incompetent sex with her which she says is good,  just because it's sex with Matthew,.even though it is obviously terrible.

Meanwhile Jake lusts after a corporate lawyer he works with.  She’s not as unattractive as Matthew but she clearly is not the right girl for Jake.

This is a very funny film with some endearing moments.  The dialogue is sharp and beautifully delivered by the two main characters.  

Though, I have to say, the many situations - from Mathews gynecological practice, to Jake telling Lainie how she might pleasure herself - left me wondering if Headland is also sharing an underlying critique of men presuming ownership of a woman's body.

Either way, this film works.