Thanks again to the IMDb community, since this film came to me via a fellow reviewer in the US – currently on this site it has no UK release date so I suspect I may never have seen it otherwise. However this is not thanks for the quality of the film – only of the gesture. Strictly Sexual has a provocative title and a plot that matches it. It starts with a rather abrupt "future" scene before flashing back to the origins of the story. At this point it has a fun fizz to it that carries you along despite the sheer unlikeliness of the narrative – the gloss and the rather contained nature of it makes it quite engaging.
The problems with it come once this early fizz has settled down a little bit. At stage the film starts to become more of a dramatic affair with the playing out of the drama that inherently comes with any "casual" relationship. In itself this is engaging enough but it never totally rings true and I always felt like I was watching a film with actors in it – it never sucked me into these relationships or gave me things that I could see were real. I have to put this at the door of the script because it is here where this problem comes from. Ultimately it comes down to being a romantic drama but when it is doing the "drama" part, it distracts but never moves.
I don't put this on the cast though because they do as well as they can with the material. The women are the stronger but this may be because they have the dominant characters. Benson does a good job with her character, allowing her to be difficult to understand and a bit conflicted in her signals but yet also keeps her open to the viewer. Kerr has to carry the romance side of the drama and she does this with beauty, lightness and a delicate performance that isn't brilliant but is just what the film needs. I found Long a little heavy in the role and I confess that I though he would have been better handing off to someone else and stick as writer. He is OK though and he works well with Urb, who is a bit too much of a pretty boy but works well with Kerr. The film contains the action really well and the tight focus on these 4 in a handful of locations gives the film a really good feel of watching an intimate play – shame that the material doesn't get as impacting or meaningful as this proximity deserves.
Strictly Sexual is an OK film but it is not as amazing as some here would suggest. The intimate delivery and sexual fizz of the material doesn't transition well when it gets more serious and, when it should suck the viewer in, it only really retains the superficial air that it started with. This is a shame because, while the film feels like it should be better, it ultimately doesn't have the reality and substance that I found myself wanting.
