Women and Sometimes Men

Women and Sometimes Men begins with Sara leaving her fiance, August. Following this breakup, Sara begins to explore her interest in dating women which is something she’s put on hold since college. The film mostly follows Sara’s potential romantic interests. These include a married couple, her ex-fiance August, and a woman named Ali who Sara meets at a coffee shop. That’s the basic plot of the movie. Sara has a lot of dates and tries to figure out her sexuality and what she wants in a relationship.

The big issue I have with this film is how easily things come to Sara, specifically romantic partners. It’s not relatable to me. Much as the character is portrayed as awkward, this never seems to hinder her from having her pick of partners of either gender. Even and especially lesbians. All the lesbians in this film are way too forward. That’s not realistic. Lesbians generally don’t make the first move. That’s our whole problem! But Sara doesn’t have this problem nor does she face much rejection, especially at the beginning. That’s not relatable. Sexual confusion and experimentation are certainly relatable topics. But a character who has their pick of partners to experiment with and faces minimal rejection is absolutely not.

This ties into a larger problem with Women and Sometimes Men; it lacks a central conflict. I get that it’s more a journey of self-discovery, but the movie doesn’t feel like it has a common thread to tie all these scenes together. I actually enjoyed a lot of scenes in this film on an individual level but they failed to come together to form a satisfactory larger picture. This also means it felt like the film lacked a satisfactory resolution. Without a central conflict, what is there to resolve?

If anything, Sara actually seems to get worse as the film goes on. She starts off as incredibly awkward but charming. But as the film goes on, she’s portrayed as more self involved and whiny. And that’s sort of how she ends. Sara as a character didn’t seem to experience much growth in the film. Additionally, the scenes of her being awkward but charming peter out as the film goes on. So by the end, she’s more unlikable than when the film started. This all seems like a weird choice for a light comedy to take in regards to its main character.

My final problem with Women and Sometimes Men is its level of gender essentialism. Sara dates members of both genders and she and other characters talk constantly about how men and women are different. Men have large hands and are rough and speak in simple sentences. Women are glamorous, intimidating and have nice-smelling hair. There’s no room in this narrative for the idea of men and women who don’t have these gendered traits, let alone people who don’t fall within the binary. I’m not saying this film needed a non-binary character or something but there were so many absolute statements about how women and men differ that it began to grate on me. This film was released in 2018. Imagine thinking gender still exists in 2018.

Women and Sometimes Men is one of those movies where it ended and I questioned what the point of telling this story was. Sara was not charming enough as a character to make this aimless movie work. The best thing I can say about it is that it’s at least a short sit.

Overall rating: 3.2/10

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