Dogging: A Love Story

Headline-chasing subject matter and undeniable film-making dash can’t stop Dogging: A Love Story, for all its skin-deep hipness, feeling as tawdry and tired as a British sex comedy of the 1970s. The film astutely chooses a tabloid-friendly topic that will appeal to the British lad-mag constituency, but ultimately Dogging barely cuts the ice even as a tame smut-fest. The first feature from director Simon Ellis - who made his name with award-winning short Soft - is essentially a slender romcom with raunchy trimmings, and seems unlikely to crack the UK theatrical market where similar fare has foundered. Smart marketing should give it some appeal to the after-pub DVD market, but beyond Britain, weak scripting and sitcom tone should make it a tough sell.

The film’s inspiration is the social phenomenon of ‘dogging’, whereby people meet in public places for in-car sex with strangers. Dan (Treadaway), a newly graduated would-be journalist, is working on an expose of the cult, with the help of his flatmate and cousin Rob (Riddell), a boorish estate agent and enthusiastic dogger. While Dan’s own long-term girlfriend Tanya (Dobson) loses interest in him, he visits an online sex chatroom to liaise anonymously with ‘Horny Geordie Lass’ - in reality, inexperienced student Laura (Heppell), whose own sexual curiosity seems a response to her overprotective dad (Mechen). While Dan makes cautious inroads into the dogging scene, Laura is tenaciously pursued by Jim (Socha), a buffoonish oik and would-be pimp, whose bravado soon predictably reveals a tender interior.

As the title suggests, Dogging: A Love Story tries to have it both ways, tempting punters with a bit of sleaze, while promising the respectable reassurance of a sweet-natured romantic payoff. The problem with the latter aspect is that the characters are either too insubstantial to care about, or downright unsympathetic. Laura, her essential innocence suggested by a pink-and-white wardrobe, is a vapid giggler, while Dan comes across as variously gauche, neurotic and petulant - a characterisation not helped by the fact that Treadaway often seems to be impersonating Ricky Gervais’s patented mode of aggrieved sarcasm. Riddell’s and Dobson’s characters are relentlessly abrasive, the only remotely likeable figure being the witless Jim -Socha’s whole-hearted turn being one of the few sources of pleasure in the film.

Confident, flashy execution keeps the film lively at the start, zipping between mocked-up online content, vox-pop interviews, and night-vision footage (all glowing eyes and pallid buttocks) of dogging sessions. The narrative, however, quickly proves limited and contrived, with repeated coincidences required to corral the players together in the same car parks.

The nocturnal shenanigans are generally too confusing for the film to hit the note of al fresco bedroom farce that it aims for, and even by gross-out comedy standards, a few ejaculation gags go a long way.

A story with genuine interest in the curious, and specifically British, dogging culture could have yielded fascinating results. Dogging, however, harps on one adolescent note, and presents a depressing and one-dimensional image of Britain as an aggressive, sex-obsessed culture. While director Ellis himself edits with nervy confidence, the film’s real stylistic trump card is Rob Hardy’s widescreen photography, which shows Newcastle off to handsome advantage - but there’s something amiss in a sex comedy if the cityscapes are what gets the pulse racing.