REVIEW: ‘How to Please a Woman’ Is Quite Pleasing

How to Please a Woman is an Australian comedy by Renée Webster about Gina (Sally Phillips), a middle-aged woman whose husband and sex life are rather lame. When her friends hire her a stripper (Alexander England) for her birthday, and he tells her he’ll do anything she asks, well, she’d like it if he’d clean her house for her. Not euphemistically. Literally. This sparks an idea for a new business after she’s laid off from her current job for not being as young and hot as the new girl her boss hired, an agency that sends hot men to women’s houses to clean for them.

This movie is a gem. I wasn’t sure what kind of tone to expect from it, deadpan, slapstick, or otherwise, but where it lands is somewhere in between sincere and farcical in precisely the right combination. It takes its subject very seriously. When the straight-edged business of cleaning houses quickly turns into a full-service sex operation, How to Please a Woman never for a moment shies away from the essence of respecting sex workers or the reality that many men simply do not respect women, especially older women, and that many such women are totally unsatisfied sexually, even by their husbands. There is an astute reverence for the unspoken bond between the women who share in these circumstances, and it extends to how Gina treats the men in her employ.

But the movie is also quite silly. I mean, the whole concept is absurd, and the men are total himbos in the nicest way. They’re sweet boys who literally have to be taught how to listen to women attentively and please them sexually because society has never expected it of them. There’s so much acute cultural criticism wrapped up inside this thoroughly funny story. All of the folks involved in the cleaning business have something or another missing from their lives, and it’s a comedic vehicle for helping them each find and fulfill those missing needs.

The one fat character, Ben (Josh Thomson), is completely sidelined in the business and played for nothing but laughs, which I was disappointed by. For all the different women that come in and out of the story professing their insecurities, he never has a chance really to confront his because the one time he goes on a job, it’s a big mistake. The unashamed candidness with which all of the show’s older characters, especially the women, talk about sex is great, though. I can just imagine the squeeming so many insecure men would be doing watching this movie, thinking they’re all Steves (Erik Thomson), the nice older man who helps Gina run the business from the backend, is supremely supportive, and absolutely knows how to turn a woman on. Although, I do believe the movie is charming enough to perhaps perk the ears of some of the men the movie is scoffing at.

How to Please a Woman is as charming as it is biting as it is aspirational. Its blend of comedy and sincerity is spot on, as its outlandish premise gives rise to all sorts of truths about sex and being an older woman. As well as some real sweet men to ogle over while you laugh at them.

How to Please a Woman is playing now in select theaters.