Director: Chris Waitt
Genre: Documentary, Comedy
Rating: A-
This movie was recommended to me by a good friend and his girlfriend,
I doubt it is something I would have ever watched, or even heard of,
otherwise. For that I appreciate them;
while A Complete History of My Sexual
Failure is not something I would have picked to watch on my own, it’s
actually a really enjoyable and interesting documentary – even if there are
points during it when you really want to yell at filmmaker and protagonist
Chris Waitt for his life choices.
A Complete History follows
Waitt’s journey of self-discovery. At
the start of the project he is attempting to come into contact with all of his
ex-girlfriends in order to determine just where he went wrong, but as the film
progresses – and the vast majority of his exes refuse to have anything to do
with him – so does his search. While it
might not take the viewer long to determine just where Waitt’s gone wrong in
his past relationships it does take him a quite bit to figure it out, and he
succeeds in throwing a few curve balls at the audience. It should be noted that this film is most
definitely not safe for work and features a shocking amount of male nudity.
I really didn’t expect to like Waitt, especially as the film progresses
and he essentially characterizes himself as your typical loser ex-boyfriend who
really doesn’t seem to get it. From his
Kurt Cobain style haircut to the fact that he seems to wear the same outfit
throughout the film – which also looks like it’s inspired by Cobain – he really
just screams ‘don’t date me’. As it
becomes clearer and clearer why he’s failed to have successful relationships it
becomes even harder to like him… but somehow he just finds his way into your
heart and makes you root for him. By the
end of the documentary I was hoping that he’d get it together and get the
girl. The humour to the film is actually
really shocking. The film really
presents itself as serious, but has this degree of dead pan, rather ironic
humour to it. There are some points when
he takes things a bit over the top, but for the most part it’s really rather
ingenious. My one big problem with this
documentary is that at times it does seem a bit fake, like it’s more of a
mockumentary than an actual documentary.
There are things that suggest that it’s not entirely real and at least
partially scripted, but other elements that are just so real it’s hard to
believe that this film isn’t legit. Either or, doc- or mockumentary, this is definitely worth watching.
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