After such a promising start of a film asking some intriguingly deep and personal questions whilst at the same time being absolutely hilarious, why are we left with an hour of staged penis and erection jokes? The amateurish/improvised camera work and rough editing seemed to form the perfect window into Waitt's world, and it was easy to accept his lazy talking head style for leading us through. It all seemed a perfect extension to his personality, explaining as much about him as does his grimy flat. We aren't watching a Fellini masterpiece, we're watching a graduation film by a student who woke up 10 years late for hand in. This extremely personalized style, together with the enthralling subject and Waitt's amusing personality, promises to entertain on many levels.
The initial few meetings with ex girlfriends are great, seeing how they have moved on with their lives compared to him (you don't even stop to think that he's a filmmaker). We start to hear his faults as he turns the camera on himself in the most personal way, asking them what they remember from the relationships, what went wrong, why they split-up, etc. There is a beautiful and strange melancholic humour as we watch this character faced with a lost past that he seems to be stuck in and unable to face in a mature way (forget the film-making). This is accentuated by the fact that hardly any of the ex girlfriends want to be there or even see him (one talks from behind a screen, via a computer).
This section culminates in a scene where he meets a girl who left him after he couldn't perform sexually. He does this in the hotel room where it happened and we feel we are in a crime scene as they talk it over. A great and funny scene and all the more hilarious as we realize the woman from the hotel is there, looking annoyed with this fact (and the fact that he is there at all). She gives her advice on the matter. It encapsulates and accentuates the feeling of the whole film to this point. He is in a place where he is unwelcome, revealing his most personal faults to whoever will listen. Brilliant.
After this the film gets preoccupied with his erection problems and something that could have been a funny subplot is turned into the main event. We are then faced with a number of staged scenes that force us to totally disregard any pretense of sincerity the film has previously suggested. He goes to the doctor and the persona we saw when he confronted his ex girlfriends: cheeky, oblivious schoolboy, is turned into a Euro Trash presenter as he sees how rude he can be whilst getting away with it. The following scenes just get worse. He goes to a psychiatrist and rather than talking about his problem he sings her a song about wanting to f*@k all the girls in the world, whilst not even being able to f*@k her. Following this he goes to a dominatrix to have his penis whipped. As a final solution he overdoses on Viagra, which takes him to the streets to ask 300 women if they will f*@k him, and as a result spends the night in a cell. I couldn't think of a more effective way to lose an audiences sympathy for a person. These scenes belong in Jackass and made me wonder why I expected more. It seems to me that his comments about not having the material for a film were true, but desperate to keep it at feature length he sacrificed the initial brilliant idea for a much lesser one.
So, in the end, when Waitts finally visits the one girl who really meant something to him but finds out she is pregnant with another man's child, how are we meant to believe his feelings for her and as a result feel sympathy for him? Through the entire middle section of the film we are faced with numerous staged scenes where he only just stops short of turning to laugh at the camera, so why accept this as real? We're left feeling that he has been mocking everyone who took part...apart from her? I have to admit that the end scenes did strike a chord: The moment of a man realizing he has missed out on something special with someone he loves, a kind of tragic awakening, whilst at the same time meeting someone new. But to give it any credibility I would have to forget a large proportion of the same film.
The initial few meetings with ex girlfriends are great, seeing how they have moved on with their lives compared to him (you don't even stop to think that he's a filmmaker). We start to hear his faults as he turns the camera on himself in the most personal way, asking them what they remember from the relationships, what went wrong, why they split-up, etc. There is a beautiful and strange melancholic humour as we watch this character faced with a lost past that he seems to be stuck in and unable to face in a mature way (forget the film-making). This is accentuated by the fact that hardly any of the ex girlfriends want to be there or even see him (one talks from behind a screen, via a computer).
This section culminates in a scene where he meets a girl who left him after he couldn't perform sexually. He does this in the hotel room where it happened and we feel we are in a crime scene as they talk it over. A great and funny scene and all the more hilarious as we realize the woman from the hotel is there, looking annoyed with this fact (and the fact that he is there at all). She gives her advice on the matter. It encapsulates and accentuates the feeling of the whole film to this point. He is in a place where he is unwelcome, revealing his most personal faults to whoever will listen. Brilliant.
After this the film gets preoccupied with his erection problems and something that could have been a funny subplot is turned into the main event. We are then faced with a number of staged scenes that force us to totally disregard any pretense of sincerity the film has previously suggested. He goes to the doctor and the persona we saw when he confronted his ex girlfriends: cheeky, oblivious schoolboy, is turned into a Euro Trash presenter as he sees how rude he can be whilst getting away with it. The following scenes just get worse. He goes to a psychiatrist and rather than talking about his problem he sings her a song about wanting to f*@k all the girls in the world, whilst not even being able to f*@k her. Following this he goes to a dominatrix to have his penis whipped. As a final solution he overdoses on Viagra, which takes him to the streets to ask 300 women if they will f*@k him, and as a result spends the night in a cell. I couldn't think of a more effective way to lose an audiences sympathy for a person. These scenes belong in Jackass and made me wonder why I expected more. It seems to me that his comments about not having the material for a film were true, but desperate to keep it at feature length he sacrificed the initial brilliant idea for a much lesser one.
So, in the end, when Waitts finally visits the one girl who really meant something to him but finds out she is pregnant with another man's child, how are we meant to believe his feelings for her and as a result feel sympathy for him? Through the entire middle section of the film we are faced with numerous staged scenes where he only just stops short of turning to laugh at the camera, so why accept this as real? We're left feeling that he has been mocking everyone who took part...apart from her? I have to admit that the end scenes did strike a chord: The moment of a man realizing he has missed out on something special with someone he loves, a kind of tragic awakening, whilst at the same time meeting someone new. But to give it any credibility I would have to forget a large proportion of the same film.