“How to Please a Woman” (M) *** and a half

BEFORE seeing writer/director Renée Webster’s debut feature movie (after working on TV series episodes), I thought, how humdrum is this likely to be? 

Has somebody made another movie about wives and mothers left at home to clean house, launder dirty linen and all the other domestic routines. A well-worn theme. No novelty about that. Dullsville. I expected it could not possibly be women’s sexual rights at every appropriate occasion. 

I wuz wrong, big time! And I am very happy to admit that. Ms Webster’s movie doesn’t fall into any single category of fiction feature. It covers an agreeably wide canvas, of which the dominant element is good, clean, dirty, satisfying orgasms, however induced, in women. With not a pubic area of either sex and only one pair of bare female nipples in view during its 107 minutes.

Gina’s (Sally Phillips) husband Adrian (Cameron Daddo) has lost interest in her sexually. Her marriage is economically comfortable but otherwise dull. She has just been made redundant at an almost insolvent removalist firm. 

On the morning of her birthday, a package arrives. The delivery man is what any well-raised, 50-year-old housewife might be glad to get. The girls at the swimming club have sent her a house cleaner. Played by Alexander England, Tom is a hunk, ready, willing and able to clean house and more. 

Before long, after a series of credible business events, Sally is beginning to take control of her life for the first time. She’s about to take over the company and its general manager Steve (Erik Thompson). 

“To Please A Woman” is a mild-flavoured polemic on women’s right to enjoy what, at the same time and in the same way, their partners – of either or both genders – are enjoying – but too often are not getting. 

It doesn’t take sides. What it says and how it says it is agreeably sensible and sensitively agreeable, validly and correctly delivering information about the physical and emotional elements of sex and laying it on with not too heavy a hand. 

Made in Perth, its entertainment and didactic values come wrapped in respect and dramatic warmth. Since its first release here on May 19, its Australian maker has sold screening rights in the US, UK, Canada, Poland, former Yugoslavia, Czech Republic and Hungary. Where next, what next, I wonder?

At all cinemas