You’d think restaurants would know better than to name a cheese dessert “Fromage a Trois.” A label like that can get couples thinking and talking about the other trans-national use of “trois. And one thing might lead to another, or two others, as it turns out.
But they don’t fret over suggestive dish-naming in The Netherlands. “Fromage” or “Menage,” it’s all good, as long as everybody has a “Happy Ending.”
That sexy TV-MA movie your kids are sneaking onto Netflix to watch this summer is a tepid Dutch treat about sex, communication, relationships, and actresses exploring the difference between play-acting a fake-orgasm and faking a “real” one.
No, it’s not as “meta” or as complicated as I’m making it out to be, and the movie is as gentle and sensitive as a softcore and seriously predictable version of this scenario can be.
But who, other than curious teens, wants to see that?
Luna (Gaite Jansen) is our heroine, the one who voice-over narrates (in Dutch with subtitles, or dubbed) about “my 132nd faked orgasm” as we meet her. She’s smitten with Mink (Martijn Lakemeier), her year-long beau. But he isn’t doing it for her in the bedroom. And at this stage, Luna figures it’s too late to bring up problems with his Touch of Mink.
She, like everybody in this movie about cute Dutch 20somethings, overshares with her friends (Claire Bender and Sinem Kavus), who fret on her behalf and make bad suggestions.
Rather than be honest — he tends to bowl over her, conversationally, but he does show a bit of consideration in bed — Luna uses that dessert menu item to suggest a solution to her unspoken “problem.”
“Threesome” it is.
Awkward flirting — as a couple — dating app consultation and “bike flirting” (making eyes as you pass each other by bicycle), which is all Luna thinks she’s good at, is how they meet Eve (Joy Delima).
And guess what? That complicates matters in exactly the way most movies about threesomes do.
Writer-director Joosje Duk handles the ”attraction” sequences with a little flair and the well-short-of-porn sexcapades with discretion, if not a lot of heat.
But this isn’t a comedy or a romantic comedy. It’s a romance, and wringing laughs out of that First Time You’re in Bed as a Throuple doesn’t suit the tone.
As we see Mink blow through Luna’s reluctance to try and set Eve up with his pal Samir (Sidar Toksöz) it becomes hard to root for them as a couple. And backing away from the deep sexual attraction between Luna and Eve seems cowardly.
What are we left with? Middling sex scenes, desultory arguments, and “real” and “fake” orgasm faces.
There’s an “After School Special” lesson here for the teens who’re logging onto Netflix to watch “Happy Ending,” about boys-to-men learning to be more generous lovers and girls-to-women realizing the need to speak up and service their needs.
But to anyone of voting age, “Happy Ending” is too unsurprising to be happy, too perfunctorily plotted to supply an ending that will satisfy anybody.
Rating: TV-MA, (somewhat) explicit sex, brief nudity, sex talk
Cast: Gaite Jansen, Martijn Lakemeier, Joy Delima, Sidar Toksöz and Sinem Kavus
Credits: Scripted and directed by Joosje Duk. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:31
