"Infidelity for beginners..."

"The character of Ben (newcomer Dean O'Gorman) resembles a young Hugh Grant, but more unconventional and less stereotyped," said Italian critic Davide Verazzani after seeing Toy Love at the Turin Film Festival.

"[Dean O'Gorman's] puppy dog good looks and comic sense of panic certainly make him a credible modern-day Casanova," said Rebecca Barry, writing about Toy Love in the New Zealand Herald.

"[Toy Love] is intelligent, sexy, fast paced and incredibly funny," says Varsity.co.nz.

"'Toy Love' was a wonderful discovery for us at Cannes. I love how deftly it hides surprisingly dark themes beneath its very sexy and funny depiction of love and lust. It's a screwball comedy that's quite twisted," said John Vanco of Cowboy Pictures.

Ben has sex with anybody as long as it’s not his girlfriend. Emily wants to be faithful but can’t say no to her mechanic. Chloe only sleeps with unavailable men. And Frank just likes to watch. Everybody’s happy sleeping around. Until Ben stupidly falls in love…

Dean stars in the outrageous romantic comedy Toy Love as Ben, a likeable but immoral cheat, who is completely driven by his desire for an unpredictable and uninhibited young woman. Kate Elliott plays Chlo and Marissa Stott is Emily.

Toy Love is an "urban, contemporary, sexy, edgy, funny film" that explores modern relationships in a setting quite different from that of Director Harry Sinclair's last film The Price of Milk, a bucolic fairy tale about "a man, a woman, and 117 cows." Sinclair's unusual film making style seems equally at home in the city or the countryside. He starts shooting a movie with no script, no shooting schedule, and no pre-production phase. "Usually filmmaking is so organized in advance," says Sinclair. "It feels very constrained. I love to take advantage of 'right now.' I've never been excited by prepared moments being played out in front of the camera."

However, the director admits that spontaneity is not without its challenges. "I can get quite anxious and yes, it's a scary process. Scary to think I don't know for sure what I'm going to be shooting the next day, but I feel that part of creativity comes from fear and I work well under pressure. I find it exhilarating."

Toy Love production began in November 2000 and was shot over several months. Says Sinclair, "It's more in the real world and it's about relationships and infidelity. Relationships are what interest me. I have no interest in car chases and gun battles particularly. I like writing about relationships between men and women. It's always been a mystery to me and I guess I'm trying to figure it out through writing about it".

(Compiled from The Price of Milk press materials, Directors World Sinclair interview, and NZ Film Commission)

MUSIC

Auckland composers Victoria Kelly and Joost Langeveld created the music for Toy Love, the first feature for which Director Harry Sinclair has commissioned an original score. Joost Langeveld, one of the leading proponents of New Zealand's burgeoning electronic/dance music scene, won the 2001 Nokia Film Award for Best Music for his work in Dean's last feature Snakeskin.

The score includes a mellow new tune called "Daylight" by Justin Ferguson (Juse) of Auckland-based music company Woodcut Productions. "Daylight sounds like the kind of song you hear the birds singing when you first fall in love. From the opening bar the track welcomes you with a xylophone straight out of a 70s sitcom and a bassline so laid back it would have to take speed just to relax. This is the tune they'll be playing in the elevator on the way up to heaven," says New Zealand Music Online. Hear Daylight.

The song "Squeeze" by legendary Auckland band Toy Love is also featured on the soundtrack. "At first I was a little perturbed although not enough so to veto the idea when (film director Harry Sinclair) initially rang me about it," said ex-Toy Love member Chris Knox about the movie's title. "There was certainly some trepidation about attending a cast and crew screening ... what if this thing that shared a name with something I have trouble escaping was awful? Fortunately, it won me over very quickly and I sat back, relaxed and enjoyed it. The title is totally appropriate and 'Squeeze' sounded great."

CAST

Dean O'Gorman: Ben
Kate Elliott: Chlo
Marissa Stott: Emily
Michael Lawrence: Francois
Chris Dykzeul : Mick
Peter Feeney: Jim
Quinton Hita : Matt
Genevieve McClean: Nancy
Jessica McCormick: Chrissy
Kim Michalis: Imogen
Daniel Gillies
Michael Keane
and Frank as Himself

CREW

Writer and Director: Harry Sinclair
Producer: Juliet Veber
Executive Producer: Fiona Copland
Sound design: Tim Prebble, Substation Sound Design
Music: Victoria Kelly and Joost Langeveld
Director of Photography: Grant McKinnon
Editor: Margot Francis
Production Designer: Dierdre McKessar

PRODUCTION COMPANY

Film 3 Ltd.

(Star Times rating ***1/2) A guy approaches a vampish young woman in a bar but struggles to avoid a cliched introduction. "It's all been said before," says one. "It's difficult to think of something original to say," says the other.

And so begins Harry Sinclair's latest absurd slice of Kiwiana, a love story, if not a lust story.

Sinclair knows it's all been done before - so he's come up with an original way to tell it, and we wouldn't expect any less.

Ben (Dean O'Gorman) meets Chlo (Kate Elliot), but Ben's living with Emily, who's sleeping with Francois, and that's just the beginning - the farce has yet to really get going.

The characters toy with each other's emotions, playing games in a web of deceit and infidelity that spreads and envelops even more young hearts.

Ben's obsession with Chlo is at the heart of Toy Love. On one hand she's presented as Ben's ideal woman - she's sexy and cool, she's a mannequin, she's a mermaid. On the other, she's a fragile child inseparable from her fluffy toy, unable to deal emotionally with her own lust problems.

But Ben means little to Chlo, other than as an object of fun. Which is appropriate considering that's all most of these characters are to an audience struggling to care for them.

But the fun is what makes the film, it's an enjoyable romp with plenty of laugh out loud moments. It's a mixture of obvious situational farce, cruel humour, and kooky Harry Sinclair inanities like the lawnmower with no lawn or the room full of Coco Pops.

It's more fun than Sinclair's previous film The Price of Milk, and a lot more enjoyable than PT Anderson's similarly themed Punch Drunk Love.

The love story hasn't been told like this before./div>

Now let's be honest here - blame it on cultural cringe, low budgets or just plain bad comedy, there's a general perception in New Zealand that our comedy is, well, pretty awful. So it was refreshing to see that Harry Sinclair's chaotic and farcical Toy Love has managed to defy the stereotype by actually being genuinely hilarious. In all seriousness, it's one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time.

The film kicks off as main character Ben meets the alluring, mysterious Chlo in an Auckland nightclub. But Ben has a problem - namely his dull live-in girlfriend Emily, who as it turns out is also fooling around with someone else.

Most of the storyline revolves around Ben's relationship with Chlo, whose strong will, eccentricity and underlying fragile nature make for some interesting developments. Chlo seems to care little for Ben other than as a plaything and a bit of fun, while Ben on the other hand is infatuated with her. When he discovers Emily's relationship with rugged but gentle mechanic Francois he breaks it off in an amusing fit of ironic self-righteousness. Newly single, he finds that Chlo is no longer interested in him. Apparently she has a fetish for unavailable men. So Ben gets back with Emily in order to woo Chlo once more, creating a whole new level of deceit. From here the web of lies and deception just keeps expanding, all to great comic effect of course.

There's no real moral to this story - it is a comedy after all. In fact the only lesson one can draw from Toy Love is that cheating, lying and even stealing are the surest path to happiness. Indeed, despite their sometimes dire moral failings, the characters are still strangely likeable, which is probably because the whole chain of events is so crazy and the characters so flawed that all you can really do is laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Harry Sinclair deserves much kudos for what appears to be his finest work to date. It's not the deepest movie, but it is intelligent, sexy, fast paced and incredibly funny. So check it out for a bit of quality local comedy. Except for the scene in The Mermaid bar there's not even a hint of cultural cringe.

(Varsity.co.nz is "THE site for New Zealand students")