Casual sex seems to be making a comeback at the movies.
Recently, Love and Other Drugs showcased the informal liaisons of Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal.
“We decided it was going to be two characters that really couldn’t be intimate,” says Jake. “And so we both went to sex as a way of avoiding things.”
This week, in No Strings Attached, Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher become the latest Hollywood a-listers to try to keep their relationship strictly physical in this Ivan Reitman comedy.
Other films to ask “What’s love got to do with it?” include 9 Songs, the erotic Michael Winterbottom movie about Matt, an English scientist, and Lisa, an American on vacation in London.
They meet, jump into the sack and go to Primal Scream and Franz Ferdinand concerts and soon learn, as Roger Ebert noted in his review, “sex is easy but love is hard.”
Another movie couple learned that lesson, with much happier results in Knocked Up, the 2007 comedy about a one night stand, an unplanned pregnancy and enforced maturity.
The Guardian called it “a new genre of romantic comedy in which an unappealing hero gets together with a gorgeous, successful woman.”
Star Katherine Heigl had a different take, suggesting the film “paints the women as shrews, as humourless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys.”
In response, the film’s director, Judd Apatow, said, “I’m just shocked she (Heigl) used the word shrew. I mean, what is this, the 1600s?”
