Cast: Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, Alycia Delmore

Director: Lynne Shelton

Screenwriter: Lynne Shelton

Humpday opens with married couple Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore) kissing and writhing around in the sheets so you will be surprised to find out that Lynne Shelton’s low-budget comedy is actually about two male friends’ attempt to get sexual with each other. Before all heterosexual male readers click away confused and all homosexual ones get excited, it’s not quite as black and white as it may seem and is in fact more about having a mid-life crisis than a change in sexual tendencies.

Happily married Ben and Anna are woken in the middle of the night by Andrew (Joshua Leonard), Ben’s free spirited best mate and old college buddy. Anna is bemused as the boys indulge in full on hugs and ‘I love you mans’ only to be told by Andrew: “And you. I don’t love you yet, but I will�. Andrew, newly returned from Machu Picchu, has the exact opposite life to his best friend both of whom fall into opposing stereotypes of which they are painfully aware of; Ben lives the white picket fence lifestyle (wife, steady job, mortgage) whereas Andrew is almost a caricature of the live-out-of-a-sack-and-sleep-with-lots-of-different-woman hippie type.

Both friends struggle to relate to each other at first. Andrew befriends a lesbian bunch who he drinks and smokes pot with, whilst Anna, who’s far from a boring house wife type, prepares her ‘legendary’ pork chops for a civilised dinner party where she hopes to get to know Andrew. With dinner party conversation soon veering, drink and joint-aided, into a deep discussion about a local porn festival where enthusiasts are invited to submit their own amateur offerings, Ben and Andrew find themselves making a rather surprising decision – Ben, in an attempt to prove he isn’t as strait-laced as Andrew thinks he is and Andrew, in attempt to prove he is as wild and experimental as he claims he is, commit to have sex on screen together for the first ever non-gay man-on-man porno.

Will they go through with it? How will Ben tell his wife? What could have turned out quite silly and gimmicky is actually an interesting look into two men coming to terms with their altered friendship and trying to validate their lives to each other and themselves. There’s a yearning for the old friendship they are attempting to hang onto; even though deep down they know this is not possible. In a way, they both traded in their bro-mance for something else a long time ago and they just never took the time to notice before. Even Anna admits to sometimes having doubts about her life and how it has changed.

On the big day, as Ben and Andrew sit in a pre-booked hotel room, Shelton perfectly creates suspense and tension as the pair talk about heterosexual mens’ abhorrence of male gay sex and how they are going to overcome this in order to go through with the act they have hung the future of their whole relationship upon.

Humpday is an interesting and honest look at a subject that is very rarely approached and Shelton manages to pull it off tastefully. It’s guaranteed to get you thinking and even squirming at some points – but that’s just part of the fun. It’s worth watching alone just to find out if they go through with it!

Humpday is out now via Vertigo Films

By Heidi Vella