My Year Without Sex

Showing at the Toronto Film Festival: My Year Without Sex, directed by Sarah Watt

Synopsis from the TIFF website:

It's August in Melbourne. As Natalie (Sacha Horler) and her husband, Ross (Matt Day), celebrate his birthday, she collapses. When she wakes up, she's in the hospital after emergency surgery for an aneurysm.

My Year Without Sex is for anyone who has suffered life's daily little challenges, only to get sideswiped by a massive one. This is what happens to Natalie, and her subsequent year-long trial ensures that she has little choice but to laugh and cry, often at the same time.

Ross and Natalie's two kids, two jobs and a dog mark them as a typical family. They deal with the typical things: school, cooking, sports, Christmas, goldfish, birthday parties, lice and bills. But when Natalie's illness hits and she becomes too frail to work or drive, she suffers a further breakdown of confidence and spirituality – one that she is unable to address until she meets Margaret (Maude Davey), a local cleric in the depths of a crisis of her own.

The story unfolds in monthly episodic segments, during which director Sarah Watt (whose film Look Both Ways won the 2005 Festival's Discovery Award) mines the minutiae of everyday life for the profundity that becomes so very clear in a life-and-death situation. Bookmarked and highlighted by colourful and expressive images (Watt is also an animator), the film beautifully captures the rollercoaster ride of family crises. It focuses on the things we take for granted, showing us that great insights rest within the typical, if only we know how to look. And as Natalie faces one funny, annoying, crazy thing after another, she begins to see them as the warp and weft of a full, rich life that is always worth fighting for.

The film's website is here.