
It’s titled “The Year I Started Masturbating,” it stars “Sleepy Hollow” hottie Katia Winter and it’s SWEDISH.
What’s not to love in this made-for-Netflix sex comedy? A lot. There’s a lot not to love.
It’s a tepid tease of a farce built around a woman’s sexual self actualization, sort of a modern twist on “It’s My Turn” and the Jill Clayburgh films of the ’70s. A couple of giggles, a genuine laugh, maybe two, some half-hearted “growth” and…credits.
Sexy? For a comedy about a just-ditched woman about to turn 40 who is lectured to start listening to her vagina’s monologues, not so much.
I reviewed that German teen sex comedy “Hard Feelings” the other day. It used the same “listen” to your genitals hook and the same confetti gimmick to simulate the thrill of orgasms. Must be something going around Europe right now.
When you’re a Swedish production and a German comedy drifting into the same territory is A) funnier and B) sexier, you’re not doing “it” right. No. Seriously.
Winter plays Hanna, a distracted creative type who can meet a deadline and dance her way to her dinner date, jamming to “Sweet City Woman” in Swedish.
But her date Marten (Jesper Zuschlag) is getting into a taxi. She’s THAT late. Not to worry, they live together and have a little boy. It’s all good.
But it isn’t. We get a hint that she’s a control freak — partly from him. And as he shakes his head at her refusal to quit her better-paying-job than his and almost melts down when he learns she’s spent “Tesla money” on a designer sofa without consulting him, we can see the writing on the wall.
Yes, the sitter calls to interrupt the break-up we see coming. There’s probably a culture joke in there, as the sitter lectures Hanna about the child’s priorities. “He” wants her at home. NOW. But it, like much of what’s supposed to play as light and funny here just doesn’t.
We get a sense that Marten’s pal has been urging him to end it. We see her dorky boss (Henrick Dorsin) hand her Post-It notes with women’s shelter and AA recovery phone numbers on them, assuming “that bastard” back home abuses her or drove her to drink, and Hanna’s best friend also leaps to conclusions about her “finally” dumping Marten.
She’s the last to catch on — at the hospital, where he’s just over-dramatized a cycling accident and is openly flirting with the nurse.
For the rest of the movie, Hanna’s jam — which she hears on earbuds, mournfully sings to herself in a “singing” therapy session and hears from a street accordionist, is “Must Have Been Love, But it’s Over Now,” by the Swedish duo Roxette.
Hanna reluctantly quit her job to save the relationship just before the abrupt dumping. She’s blown a fortune on a sofa, and has no cash. And she quickly runs out of people she can call on for a place to crash.
Only the fiesty young barmaid Liv (Vera Carlbom) seems to see what ails her.
In the words of Olivia Newton John, she’s not listening to her “body talk, body talk.” What Hanna needs, Liv lectures, is to master is the art of self-pleasure.
I don’t know how you fail to make a beautiful actress neither titillating nor amusing as she mimes stimulating herself at the office, or at home with a gadget, but hats off to director and co-writer Erika Wasserman for managing that.
Couples counseling scenes have long been the fodder for rom-coms, as such “professionals” are notorious for taking sides. That’s what happens here, and it’s not the least bit funny.
Even a sexual stimulation tutorial that gets accidentally blasted over the smart speakers at the office doesn’t merit more than a grin, the way it’s handled here.
A hook-up getting the news, in flagrante delicto, that his mother just died in hospice must play funnier in Sweden.
And the little speeches about the psychological, physical and professional benefits of masturbation aren’t clevely written or comically played.
The script makes Hanna a victim, but one with legitimate focus and disinterested-in-him issues. And Marten comes off the way she describes him, a “whiner” (in Swedish, or dubbed into English) and a bit of a whiney bully.
So we’re not rooting for him, we have a hard time rooting for her and we sure as shooting aren’t rooting for “them.”
How you start off with these movie “hooks” and end up with nothing makes “The Year I Started Masturbating” seem almost that long, and a comedy that comes nowhere near to measuring up to its tease of a title.
Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, profanity
Cast: Katia Winter, Jesper Zuschlag, Henrik Dorsin, Nour El-Refai, Hannes Fohlin and Vera Carlbom
Credits: Directed by Erika Wasserman, scripted by Christin Magdu, Bahar Pars and Erika Wasserman. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:41

