Directed by Sook-Yin Lee. Written by Joanne Sarazen and Sook-Yin Lee
Romantic and sexual exploration takes a quaint turn in Sook-Yin Lee’s Paying For It, a romcom of sorts where a comic book author decides romance isn’t for him, opting to outsource physical intimacy to sex workers, while his ex navigates a string of relationships that don’t quite hit the spot.
Sonny (Emily Lê) is in bed, staring straight into her partner Chester’s loving eyes when she tells him she thinks she’s falling in love with someone else and she wants his permission to “see where it goes.” Chester, played by Dan Beirne, is taken aback, but sweetheart that he is, he accepts and off she goes: relationship open. It’s not long before there’s no relationship at all.
Amicable to a fault, Chester moves into the basement of their Toronto home like a well-mannered ghost, doodling away while the muffled sounds of Sonny and her new lover bounce down to him. The line between meek and doormat blurs. Yet, behind the acquiescence, something stirs. Chester suddenly posits that relationships are essentially slavery, and the ultimate non-committal relationship that exists between a sex worker and their john is the way to go. Phone in one hand, curious schlong in the other, he starts leafing through the sticky pages and dialing numbers.
Paying For It is a coyly provocative conversation about amatonormativity and what satisfying relationships can look like. A movie about the role a partner, sexual or platonic, can play in our lives and what we gain from these connections, like Chester it’s surprisingly laid-back.There are no angry fights and no hiding under the covers with teary eyes, but there are also no happy-shiny montages of people falling in love.
Chester’s rotund physique and eager smile makes him about as non-threatening as they come, and Paying For It is non-threatening in turn. Chester’s largely snuggly sexcapades only really go south to the point of a sex worker showing up late and unprepared, so Lee’s movie feels like an extension of the amicable and open-minded conversations Chester has with his friends where he softly rebuts their doubts, and insists that this is a sweet arrangement.
Without any experiences of their own in this particular trench of love’s great battlefield, they have few arguments to make, and so Paying For It forgoes any rigorous examination of Chester’s newfangled opinion.
And what about Sonny? Her story’s likely more familiar, but it’s shunted to the side in favor of Chester, and Lee and co-writer Sarazen struggle to elevate her misadventures into something you haven’t seen before, only shuffling her through short-lived relationships, some good, some bad, and ultimately all misaligned.
It’s not uninteresting necessarily, and most will likely nod in recognition to some part of Sonny’s experiences, but there’s nothing here you haven’t heard over brunch with your female friends, so between Chester’s unchallenged new existence and Sonny’s run-of-the-mill misadventures, Paying For It has little in the way of tension or stakes. Like the dynamic in Chester’s newfound preferred relationship, you can’t ask too much of Lee’s movie.
To its credit, Paying For It features a fuzzier type of relationship than we’re used to seeing, and it’s ultimately what lets you lean back and chuckle along without expectations. It never feels sugar-coated, or jazzed up for effect, instead just featuring genuine people doing reasonable things aligned with their personal values and beliefs. As a movie set in the lates 90s and early 00s, depicting non-monogamy and sex work feels fresh.
Paying For It is a glossy depiction of a pretty radical dating philosophy that decides not to wrestle too hard with its ideas, and instead take a gentle and twinkle-eyed look at how you might find fulfillment in others. It’s fun, lighthearted, kind, and warm to the touch. A 90-minute encounter no one would mind paying for.
Mikkel Frederiksen 