This is a low-budget Canadian dramedy written and directed by Sook-Yin Lee, adapted from the eponymous graphic novel by Chester Brown.
A very nice, nerdy cartoonist is told by his equally nerdy girlfriend that she wants to explore a relationship with somebody else, but doesn’t want him to move out. He accepts her decision, but hates his life as the ex-boyfriend and cuckold-in-residence. He has to listen to her have hot sex and sometimes violent arguments with the other guy. He ultimately decides to give up on romantic love and to satisfy his urges with … er … escorts.
I intended to capture the nudity and ignore the film, because this didn’t sound like the kind of film I would enjoy. I was wrong. I ended up watching every bit of it, even the cleverly illustrated closing credits (presumably images from the source novel).
From the first moments, it feels like truth. It seems to be an accurate account of the way things actually happened in Chester Brown’s life. Some of his experiences with the escorts were positive dalliances with pleasant, middle-class women making a better living than they could elsewhere. Other experiences were awkward and confusing. Still other experiences were depressing and frightening. He saw how escorts were treated by the police. He heard the life stories of damaged women from homes without love. He suspected that one woman he had sex with was in the brothel against her will, and recognized his own culpability if she was a victim of sex trafficking.
Meanwhile, the nerdy girl who dropped him goes through hell in a series of relationships that seemed at first to be promising and gratifying, but went sour for one reason or another. In other words: life. I wanted to reach out to her and say, “You know that nerd would have loved you forever, and would have been holding your hand on your death bed,” but the nerd himself resisted any “told ya so” impulses he might have had, and remained her close, supportive, platonic friend.
What makes the film seem even more real is that the nerdy girl who dropped Chester Brown in real life is none other than the writer/director of this film, Sook-Yin Lee.
Here is the Wikipedia entry about the graphic novel, which is really a graphic autobiography. Interesting story.
There is a great deal of topless nudity from the women in this film, but no more than that. No female lower bodies are in evidence. On the other hand, the cartoonist’s dick is seen in several scenes.
So I could have liked it a lot more.
Andrea Werhun
Emily Le
Hannia Cheng
Jamie Whitecrow
Lea Rose Sebastianis
Here is Andrea Werhun’s mini-autobiography from IMDb.
Andrea Werhun is a writer, performer, and producer based in Toronto. She is the author & co-creator of Modern Whore: A Memoir (2022, Strange Light/Penguin Random House Canada) with filmmaker Nicole Bazuin. The book is soon to be a major motion picture, starring Andrea and executive produced by 2024 Palme D’Or winner Sean Baker. In 2023, Andrea co-wrote, produced, and performed in Thriving: A Dissociated Reverie, starring Black non-binary former sex worker Kitoko Mai, about their dissociative identity disorder diagnosis. The short film enjoyed its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and was selected as one of TIFF Canada’s Top Ten 2023. Andrea is also the subject, performer, and producer of the award-winning short films Modern Whore (SXSW) and the CBC short doc, Last Night at the Strip Club (Hot Docs). She has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian, CBC Radio, and is a regular contributor to The Globe & Mail.
The original comic is pretty good. One of the elements I liked about the comic was the conversations between his fellow cartoonists Seth and Joe Matt. The latter pair spend a fair chunk of their page space trolling the shit out of Chester.
I haven’t seen the movie although it looks like this sub-plot was dropped.
I’m still a little baffled that he went from doing an award winning historical biography about Louis Riel (Canadian Historical figure) to a book about prostitution.
Chester’s friends have very small parts in general.
The film is dedicated, however, to Joe Matt.
I read the graphic novel when it came out in May 2011. (Fun fact: it came out at the same time that Brown was running as a libertarian candidate in the federal election, which made for some interesting publicity stories). The things I remember most about the graphic novel were the relationship between the three comics creators (one of them considered seeing a prostitute cheating with regards to getting laid) and pages and pages of Brown fucking blank faced Asian women (as in they weren’t given any facial features so that the real gals couldn’t be identified in real life) that grew tedious after a while. I don’t remember Sook-Yin Lee playing all that huge of a role in the story after their breakup at the beginning of the story, so this whole “nerdy girl who dropped him goes through hell in a series of relationships that seemed at first to be promising and gratifying, but went sour for one reason or another” subplot is something she added for the film.
Sound interesting, but too depressing for my taste. I have never found prostitution interesting or even sexy, and is no substitute for the real thing. Nor is ‘relationship hell’ something the resonates with me, as it has not been my experience in life.