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SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED
Though documentaries are always what I’m most excited about when I go to festivals, none at Sundance really jumped out at me this year… except one.
Brit filmmaker Chris Waitt came to Park City with a delicious doc that’s so funny and superbly structured it’s hard to believe that it’s non-fiction, but he insists that it’s all real.
In A Complete History of My Sexual Failures Waitt has recently been dumped, and having never been good with women he takes the moment of emptiness to examine why his life has been full of failed relationships by deciding to look up his old flames and ask them what went wrong.
Armed with a boom mic, huge headphones and a tattered wardrobe, Waitt sits down with his exes (many of them very reluctant to do the interviews) to get the brutal truth about what was wrong with him. Some hated his tardiness to everything, some hated his self-absorption, one was so turned off by him that she stopped dated white people completely and one hated him so much that she would not be filmed for the interview and would only reply to his questions via a computer that would generate automated responses.
But the film isn’t just watching Waitt (who also has a puppet show in the works at MTV) crash and burn, during his journey of inadequacy he decides to use the Internet to score some dates. On one where he gets the girl back to his flat a new problem is revealed as Waitt can’t close the deal. This begins a sub plot that brings Waitt to a hypnotist, abusing Viagra and a trip to a sado-masochist in a scene that’s filled with so much full-frontal hilarity it’s hard to imagine how the scene will work once the ratings board gets its hands on it.
With a mix of Borat and Michael Moore, A History of My Sexual Failures can certainly find an audience.
