***/****
starring Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, Alycia Delmore
written and directed by Lynn Shelton
by Jefferson Robbins SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The difference in intimacy between male friendship and married companionship gets laid bare in the opening minutes of Humpday. There's the comfortable, cuddled body contact shared by young Seattle office drone Ben (Mark Duplass) and his wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore). And then there's the bellowing, clenching reunion of Ben and free-spirited old buddy Andrew (Joshua Leonard), who, not seen in a decade, arrives unannounced on the redeye from Mexico. "I respect the FUCK outta you, man!" Andrew declares, and it's both mutual and palpable–even though Ben bunks Andrew down in his storeroom, along with all his other old memories. The two chums pick up where they left off, when Ben was young and irresponsible, leaving Anna no point of entry into their fraternal duprass. Soon a mix of inebriation, macho brinkmanship, and terror of growing old with no lasting accomplishment drives the two straight friends to plan a video in which they will have sex with each other–for the sake of art. (Ben at first wants to title it "Tender Is the Butt.") They subsequently spend much of the movie papering over, debating, and justifying their pledge. Lynn Shelton's film–and the director appears in a supporting role, prodding Ben and Andrew towards commitment–is at its best in these easygoing, naturalistic, very funny scenes; she airs the discomfort of straight male friendship rituals, already heavy on grappling and the slapping of flesh, that suddenly become engorged with sexual threat or promise. A shame, then, that Humpday is heavy on foreplay but refrains, as do its lead characters, from consummation. After laughing so long at the mere discussion of straight male-on-male sex, imagine the cleansing indictment of the audience if we'd gotten beyond the second base of hotel-room rationalizations and bare-chested hugs. Shelton does offer us an extratextual happy ending, though: the sight of Joshua Leonard, terrorized on tape for The Blair Witch Project all those years ago, at last finding something to love in a camcorder's viewscreen.
