Lust Life Love

A very steamy drama about a polyandrous woman who brings an innocent dweeb into her naughty circle, and then things grow more complicated.

It’s not often you see someone from the media get their work turned into a movie — let alone write the screenplay themeselves, co-direct it and star despite having little feature film experience. But Stephanie Sellars did just that, turning the sex column she wrote in the New York Press from 2006 to 2007 into this flick.

It’s about a polyandrous woman who is a sex columnist (in a blog, in the movie’s autobiographical-ish version) with a following in New York City. She goes to Chemistry and other clubs where people flirt or strip or actually have sex with each other, has her own roving party of bisexual encounters with a few who are close to her, and then memorializes it in her blog for members of her tribe and the curious to follow.

Sellars, who co-directed with Benjamin Feuer, plays herself (or at least a version thereof), a smart and lusty redhead who enjoys dressing up in costumes, going to fun places, meeting people and having sex with them… or not, as her whims dictate. She is strongly and proudly her own woman who doesn’t care about old-fashioned morals on relationships, especially her well-to-do parents’.

(She’s also named Veronica in the movie.)

I might mention that it’s a very different experience to be polyamorous — which is not the same as a swinger — in your 20s, when Sellars wrote her column, versus your 40s as she is today, though maybe that’s why she wanted to make this story now.

It’s about how Veronica, having eschewed monogamy her entire life, brings a married man, Daniel (Jake Choi), into her circle of free love. An innocent dweeb, he quickly embraces the lifestyle with zealous vigor. In a stereotypical plot, Daniel would grow emotionally attached to Veronica and push her to give up polyandry, she would become resentful, they fight and break up, love it up with some other people, and come back together for the happy ending.

Instead, things are more complicated. And it’s actually Veronica who finds herself wanting more from Daniel, and her resentment comes from the fact that he seems more easily able to sleep around with other people, including her best friend, Maya (Makeda Declet), than she is able to handle

As you might guess from the themes, there is a lot of nudity and sex in “Lust Life Love.” That’s not the primary appeal, but I appreciate it when a movie matches its content with its tone. The film’s not rated by the MPAA, but if it was it would probably struggle to get an R, without engaging in straight-out explicit depictions of sex.

There’s nothing more annoying when a film teases you with being hot-hot-hot stuff, and then you get a lot of coy covering bedsheets and sidal nudity. I still get giggles thinking about the unintentionally hilarious love scenes in “Black Swan.”

Sellars is an arresting screen presence, though her line readings are sometimes a bit flat. Choi is convincing as a vanilla sort of guy who finds he likes the taste of hot sauce, and starts ladling it onto everything he consumes. Soon Daniel has left his wife and old job of being an apartment broker behind, diving deep into becoming a chef who likes to try all the ingredients in every aspect of his life.

The movie’s energy flags badly in the last act, as Veronica suddenly transforms from a fun-loving free spirit into a spiteful scold, breaking the rules when engaging in some BDSM play and peeing on Daniel’s brush when she finds out he’s shacked up with someone else.

It’s most interesting when it’s exploring the subject of this lifestyle and the concept of “compersion,” which is supposed to be the opposite of jealousy. The idea being that seeing someone you love get pleasure from another person should be exciting to you, too.

I’m not ready to dive into any free-for-all orgies, but “Lust Life Love” at least gives us a glimpse into a community that probably seems very weird or even twisted to the average person, but like every other is filled with regular folks who are trying to deal with their hangups, whatever they may be.