Humpday

It’s been a decade since Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard) were the bad boys of their college campus. Ben has settled down and found a steady job, a loving wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore), and a safe suburban home in Seattle. Andrew took the alternative route as a vagabond artist, traversing the globe and sating his thirst for sex and adventure.

When Andrew shows up unannounced on Ben’s doorstep at 2am, they easily fall back into their old dynamic of macho one-upmanship. Late into the night at a bohemian party, the two find themselves locked in a mutual dare: to enter an amateur porn contest together. But what kind of boundary-breaking, envelope pushing porn can two straight men make? Amidst the booze, bragging and bluster one idea stands out – they’ll fuck each other… on camera. A single obstacle bars this audacious and artistic leap into the great unknown: who will tell Ben’s wife?

On paper a cross between boorish frat boy comedy and a Judd Apatow wet dream, Humpday is actually an intelligent, perceptive and gently comic look at the boundaries of sexual identity and how fluid or rigid those boundaries might be.

The third feature from writer/director Lynn Shelton (who also appears in an acting role), the film proved a sensation at Sundance and Edinburgh, and has been talked up as one of the year’s must-see US indies. Evolving out of Shelton’s desire to collaborate with Duplass, who was originally scheduled to play Andrew, Humpday was shepherded from script through to production in an extremely organic fashion, with all the principle cast being asked to contribute more than just performances to the project.

Humpday is also pretty much on the money in its look at domesticity and the myth of conjugal bliss.

Lending a tremendous authenticity and unforced intimacy to the character interplay, the decision to temper the high-concept narrative with a deliberately underplayed, naturalistic aesthetic also pays dividends in regard to creating a sense of believability concerning the situation that slowly unfolds before our eyes. Dialogue and small gestures become imbued with added nuances and hidden import, and from a frankly low-end premise themes such as the need to take stock of where we are in contrast to where we’d like to be in our lives are subtly and skilfully invoked.

A springboard from which Shelton also explores heterosexual attitudes to homosexuality, with both Ben and Andrew (both well played by Duplass and Leonard respectively) slowly realising that they are nowhere near as open-minded in this regard as they would like to imagine, Humpday is also pretty much on the money in its look at domesticity and the myth of conjugal bliss. The ace in the hole in this regard is the character of Anna, a woman who thinks nothing of straddling her beery-breathed, barely conscious husband following a fierce row because she doesn’t want to miss a day of ovulation.

Describing herself as ‘a close observer of the emotional life of people’ and as being ‘particularly compelled by characters who fervently want to connect with each other but who struggle deeply to do so’, Shelton has been tagged as an extremely adept chronicler of the associations between men. It’s fair to say that the director is good on relationships, period.

Jason Wood

Anticipation:

Two straight men conspire to have sex with each other on camera in an attempt to test their friendship. Sounds like a moronic American comedy.

Enjoyment:

So much smarter than that. It’s a relatively sober synthesis of Old Joy and mumblecore.

In Retrospect:

Lynn Shelton is far more interested in introspective contemplation than shock or titillation.