What's Better Than Sex? David Wenham in 'Better Than Sex'!
Friday, May 29, 2015 at 6:00PM 
For The Lusty Month of May, we're looking at a few sex scenes. Here's Glenn...
Can we take a moment to appreciate David Wenham as a sex object? I mean, I’m sure most of you have already done so, probably around the time he threw his clothes off and replaced them with abdominal-enhancing body make-up on 300, but for me it’s all about sex. Better than Sex, I mean, his 2000 romantic comedy with Susie Porter that marked the directorial debut of Jonathan Teplitzky (The Railway Man). The entertaining box office hit came on the heels of the television series SeaChange that saw him embrace the handsome, charming personality that he imbued in real life after a series of film roles that screamed Thespian with a capital T, bringing proper David Wenham appreciation to the (locally, at least for the time being) masses where it belonged.
He was the type who’d bake you scrambled eggs for breakfast in the buff and make you laugh at dorky jokes before sending you to heaven. Amen to that!
Better Than Sex is one big long sex scene in a way as two people extend their one-night stand into a one-night-and-a-day stand and then across three whole days. They basically spend their entire time either pre-coital, post-coital, or… well, you know, coital. If they're not doing it, they're talking about doing it or talking about having just done it. Or in one of the funniest scenes where their internal monologues talk about how much they don't want to do it because, well, they're exhausting. Sex is (should?) be tiring, after all!
Sex comes easily for both Wenham’s Josh and Porter’s Cin. And why shouldn’t it? They’re both attractive, but blessedly in a film that attempts to grapple with the real emotions attached to casual sex, they both look and sound like real people. When he asks the woman he barely knows if he’s getting fat, he doesn’t actually had rock-hard abs to make it seem entirely ridiculous. He doesn’t wear the most flattering underwear, she doesn’t pull the sheets around her when she sits up naked, there are condom wrappers strewn around the floor, and when they have sex they surprise each other because that’s what it should be like. They make sense as sexual partners in the movie and in the real world, which is certainly not always the case when it comes to Hollywood.
Their first horizontal dalliance happens off screen, and the movie opens by utilizing that well-worn cinema trick of having the drunken sexual partners wake up in bed together the next day. Except in this case, Josh and Cin play a coy game of one-night-stand politics (to go home or not go home) and rather than act shy and like he doesn’t know what came over him (ahem – pun unintended) the night before, instead he initiates round two.
And just like that, et voila.
"It's the best time. When you're still half asleep. Just semi-conscious."
"Yeah... okay... I'm relaxed. Eyes closed, stay asleep. What if I don't come? Oh stop it. Just close your eyes, just close your eyes. Oh, bingo! That's it. Niiice and gentle. Up a bit. Now 'round. And around. Yeah, okay, okay. What if I come too fast? Oh forget about him, he can beg for his later. Oh yeah, I'm just gonna lie here and relax. Left. Go left. Please go left. Just there. Mmmm."
Barely ten minutes into the movie and our female romantic character has already been on the receiving end of oral sex. How rare is that! "After a while I thought my jaw was going to drop out of my head."
And just because it'd be mean not to, here are a couple of David's other fine moments.
If that's not enough to convince you to seek out this jazz-scored hip rom-com then I don't know what will.
Reader Comments (7)
I already appreciated David Wenham as a sex object in my head with no real proof of it in the movies. So obviously I must now find this movie.
I thought he was super cute and the only good thing in Van Helsing.
oh susie porter - so natural, so likeable, so underrated
LOVE this film. And, to this day, I can always say...."dess-i-cat-ed co-co-nuuuuuuuuut".
I think I've seen that movie. Is it the one in which she says I love you while he's f**king her doggy-style? I don't remember if I had liked it but it's nice that someone reminded me of it.
Just started reading this series and have to say, what a great idea! I know what to check out David Wenham in everything he's done. Is there something I should avoid.
Sorry. Shouldn't type while tired. Above should say: I now want to check out everything David Wenham has done. He and Linus Roache.