‘The End Of Sex’: Review

Dir: Sean Garrity. Canada. 2022. 87mins

A forty-something married couple take advantage of a child-free week to attempt to spice up their faltering love life in The End Of Sex, a film which finds wry humour in real-life domestic issues but is less satisfying as a broad-strokes sex comedy. Opening in the US on April 28 after a festival run which included Toronto, Glasgow and Dublin, the film may struggle to make a splash theatrically but could gain some traction with a streamer. The presence of Schitt’s Creek star Emily Hampshire may help, re-teaming with director Sean Garrity and co-star Jonas Chernick a decade after the trio made My Awkward Sexual Adventure. 

 Finds wry humour in real-life domestic issues, but is less satisfying in its broad strokes sex comedy

In that, she played an exotic dancer tasked with teaching an accountant (Chernick) the art of seduction. Here, they play long-married 40-something couple Emma and Josh who realise that, while they love their life together, they have lost their sexual spark. With the kids off at winter camp — the same camp where Emma and Josh met, decades before — the pair decide to add some flavour to their vanilla bedroom routine.

This screenplay, written by Chernick (who also co-wrote My Awkward Sexual Adventure, and again plays the same nerdy character), bypasses such things as lingerie and sex toys, flinging the couple straight into a world of threesomes, sex clubs and the taking of ecstasy. On paper that would seem to make for some humorously cringey fish-out-of-water scenarios, in which Emma and Josh are forced to break out of their comfort zone. On screen, however, it becomes a series of increasingly plodding vignettes in which the couple find their plans routinely thwarted by, amongst other things, the discovery that Emma’s parents frequent their small (unnamed) Canadian town’s only sex club (the film shot in Hamilton, Ontario). A threesome also doesn’t go according to plan.

This latter thread sees Melanie Scrofano getting short shrift as Emma’s bisexual friend Wendy, who turns from level-headed art teacher to psycho stalker after one single lacklustre night together. And while Lily Gao’s Kelly is presented as Josh’s switched-on, sexually adventurous younger colleague— “Don’t say woke, you’re so embarrassing!” she admonishes  — she is  reduced to making a drunken pass at Josh after being publicly dumped by her married lover. For a film supposedly pushing boundaries, this is all wearily familiar. 

The real barrier to Emma and Josh’s (and our) enjoyment is, however, the notion that parenting and domestic life has stripped them not only of their libidos, but also of their emotional maturity. Despite their years together they are unable to tackle this problem head on, resorting to outlandish and manipulative attempts to jumpstart their sexual chemistry rather than making any genuine attempts to reconnect. Equally, attempts to paint them as clueless, over-the-hill fuddy-duddies also strikes an odd chord. 

That’s a shame, because the film does find a genuine spark in its quieter moments. Hampshire gives Emma both agency and vulnerability as she attempts to cope with her unrequited sexual appetites and an inappropriate crush on an old art school colleague Marlon (Grey Powell) — who, like Wendy, has coincidentally carried a torch for her for years. Chernick is likeable enough as the homespun, blindsided Josh, and there is also definite truth in the notion that passion and intimacy take work. It could just all have benefited from a more delicate touch.