Leslye Headland’s first feature, Bachelorette, debuted at Sundance in 2012. An adaptation of her own bleak, savage play about female friendship, it was duly toned down for the screen. Her followup, Sleeping with Other People, is the full Hollywood sell-out. One of the more interesting young voices in film has made a very, very traditional romantic comedy.
In Park City to present her film, Headland described it as: “When Harry met Sally for assholes” – and indeed the plot is very close to the Nora Ephron classic. Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey (Alison Brie) lose their virginity to each other in college and don’t meet again for a decade, when they’re both attending a sex addicts anonymous meeting. Ever since Lanie left him, Jake his been a serial womaniser and Lanie has been cheating on her current boyfriend with an old flame from college (Adam Scott), who is also in a relationship. After a first date, they decide to start a friendship where they don’t sleep with each other. Why, exactly? It’s never quite explained satisfactorily – except in Cosmo quiz wisdom and tired pop psychological cliché.
Jake and Lainey start acting like a couple even though they’re not one, the classic Harry and Sally dilemma, but the “for assholes” part seems to consist of them talking graphically about sex, cursing, and taking molly at a child’s birthday party. No one can write a hilarious rant like Headlund. Sudeikis’s monologue about boring sex in the first scene is the entire movie’s highlight and there are some funny gags in the movie, but not enough to hold it together. The whole conceit of their relationship is strained and there are other stylistic details – the pair texting together, Jake recounting sex flashbacks – brought up only to be abruptly dropped.
Though only 90 minutes long, the end of the affair forever seems tantalisingly out of reach, with tacked-on groan-worthy codas recalling the era of Katherine Heigl, in which the only possible happy ending is one where a woman and a man commit to a monogamous marriage. I’m not faulting Headland for trying to inject new life into an under-appreciated and much-needed genre – nor wanting to secure a commercial hit. It’s just a shame when you reflect on that early promise.
