Here is a lo-fi British film about sex, acted and directed with conviction – but it’s impossible to believe in any of this, making it difficult to understand either as comedy or drama. If there was a way of reconfiguring the drama so that it was utterly serious, Bonobo might have made a stronger movie. Tessa Peake-Jones plays Judith, a middle-aged woman who is deeply disturbed when her 20-year-old daughter, Lily (Eleanor Wyld), throws away a promising career to live in a commune based on the liberated sexual behaviour of bonobo apes. So Judith insists on turning up, to investigate matters for herself, and there are no prizes for guessing how her uptightness is going to be modified. The opening dream sequence promises a startling film, but it quickly morphs into something a bit sitcommy.
