The Aussie comedy ‘How to Pleasure a Woman’ revolves around a fun and funny concept: a company that provides cleaning and orgasm services to women. This hook piques curiosity – at least enough for a shy eyebrow. Light plot is often not enough, and in this case the film struggles to maintain the charm.
The story follows Gina (Sally Phillips), a middle-aged woman who is treated like cellophane by her husband and boss. She escapes this contemporary feminine mystique through swimming, and writer-director Renée Webster frequently portrays Gina crawling fearlessly across the Pacific with her swim club. After this friendly all-female team sends a stripper to Gina’s house as a birthday surprise, our heroine tired of housework gets the idea to start a bespoke business.
Inspired by a real Australian sex work service, “How to Please a Woman” takes a clear look at the enigmas of female pleasure. Here’s a film that, thankfully, has no illusions about the various ways to please women, and its focus on communication above all else is sound (if sure) advice for viewers looking for an answer to the title of ark.
Yet there is a note of primacy in Webster’s narration. The sex scenes are mostly ellipses that shift from foreplay to pillow talk, and when addressing more eccentric desires, the film occasionally pranks at the expense of the women it aspires to empower. Interrogating cravings is worthwhile, but playing libido for laughs is a temptation this unstable comedy would have been wise to resist.
How to please a woman
Unclassified. Duration: 1h47. In theaters and available for rental or purchase on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay-TV operators.