A documentary that is a double winner. It educates while entertaining. Alex Liu’s (first film) A Sexplanation is a whole lotta fun and you will learn plenty at the same time. As proof, after I watched it I brought up several things from the film at a dinner with friends. A sure sign of a film you enjoyed.
Liu shows how inadequate American sex education has been. To try and figure out what he has not learned about sex (and please remember he is a 36-year-old) he goes about interviewing a variety of people like psychologists, sex researchers, a Jesuit priest and even his own parents. All this adds up to plenty of information, some of it enlightening while some downright shocking, while giving you a couple of good chuckles at the same time.
Church pews. Neuroscience labs. Liu travels far and wide to get at the heart of the matter when it comes to sex. The impetus to do this comes from the shame Liu has felt most of his life about his own sexuality (he is a gay man) and sex in general. Figuring he was like most adults in the United States he sets out to right all the wrongs we have learned about sex.
Sometimes films like this one which try to combine humour with a serious subject fall flat on their faces. They end up just being kooky with none of the important information they are trying to bring to us filtering through. Liu, who is also onscreen a lot of the time, walks this particular tightrope like an expert. Keeping it light, but also making sure we take notice of the points he or the people he is interviewing are making.
We soon learn that sex is a lot like going into your local ice cream place, in that there are a lot of flavours and varieties. You can have a couple of favourites or just stick to one kind. It is dealer’s choice when it comes to sex and each individual is a dealer. Another important point of the doc is that judging others for what they like or even that they enjoy sex is not cool. We could all stand to be a little less judgmental when it comes to sex.
A Sexplanation shows us that it is never too late to get a real sex education.