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 Australian writer-director SARAH WATT speaks about her new feature film MY YEAR WITHOUT SEX with Rave’s TIM MILFULL.
Writer-director Sarah Watt has a history in animation, and like her contemporary, Adam Elliot (Mary & Max), admits that there’s a strident control freak slaving away somewhere at the helm in her mind. So the themes in her latest film My Year Without Sex – much like her previous feature Look Both Ways – challenge us to think about all of those things in our lives that fall outside our control: from the ubiquity of consumer culture to the cruel health twists that fate sometimes throws our way. "What I think I’m trying to do is have an enjoyable and entertaining, but hopefully not unintelligent hour-and-a-half. I’m also trying to celebrate some of the things I like about the world, and just hold a mirror up to some of the things I don’t like."
In My Year Without Sex, Natalie (Sacha Horler) is a tireless mother running a hectic household of two children and her loving, but sometimes misguided husband, Ross (Matt Day). But is she ‘tireless’? After a routine visit to her GP, Natalie crawls out of a groggy unconsciousness to see her worried hubbie, and a doctor who is quick to explain the dangers of aneurisms. In the wake of this sort of traumatic health event, patients sometimes need to carefully consider their stresses; sneezing, straining on the toilet, and sex are all out for the next year or so. If life in her family wasn’t already filled with tension, Natalie’s household is about to get so much more complicated.
 Like Bob Connelly’s 2005 adaptation of the Eliot Perlman novel Three Dollars, Watt is examining the various forces buffeting the middle and lower middle-classes, from the impact of global changes and worrying about having enough money to pay the next grocery bill, to the more subtle expectations we think we must meet. "These days, it’s even more complex because of what we now consider essential – there’s even more stuff than there was in the eighties, and there was a lot more stuff then than there was in the thirties when people were struggling. These days, people think it’s essential for every member of the family to have a mobile phone, and probably a couple of cars." And this is one of the core themes in My Year Without Sex: finding meaning in a cluttered world; there "is too much stuff, and chaos, and lack of order, which [in this film] is all meant to reflect a lack of order in the universe, and what we can control in our own lives."
Much like her previous work, Watt brings a frantic, chaotic energy to her new film, neatly dividing the story into a series of monthly chapters that document Natalie’s illness. Every frame, whether title-boards or live action, is crammed with all of the things that fill our everyday lives; the result is a gentle and generous examination of lower-middle class family life.
MY YEAR WITHOUT SEX opens in cinemas Thursday, rated M. Check out www.myyearwithoutsex.com.au for more information.
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