Chris Waitt has been dumped many times: face to face, by phone, text and even by webcam. Dawn, the childhood sweetheart he lost his virginity to, recalls that their relationship faltered after he got drunk at a party and kissed her mother. Another re
flects: "I'm sure I must have been sad when it ended but I was 11 years old."
Initially his investigation of past failures stalls when all Waitt's exes refuse to be interviewed. Then his mother intervenes and persuades some of them to talk on camera. After a while, however, the film senses it may be losing our attention and cranks up a second strand by revealing Waitt has been suffering from erectile dysfunction for three years. This is confirmed by a woman he has just slept with, who agrees that his performance in bed is disappointing.
Not only in bed. A Complete History is a film full of unfunny moments that have been contrived for the camera such as writing and performing an obscene song to a psychologist, a whipping and spanking session with a dominatrix that feels like a Jackass discard, and one night when Waitt takes "six or seven Viagra" and heads onto the streets of Soho to ask women to have sex with him. At that point, from fatuous ingénu he crosses over into annoying sex pest.
Charmless and dishonest, Waitt's desperation is like an audition tape for Channel Four's skit show of humiliation Balls Of Steel. A final confrontation between Waitt and his big lost "true love" is both the best and the worst moment; her response is poignant and heartfelt, but there's nothing in Waitt's manufactured performance that earns her tears.
On general release from Friday
FEMALE AGENTS (15)
** Sent to rescue a British scientist from the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied France before he gives away plans for the D-Day invasion, Jean-Paul Salomé's Female Agents (Les Femmes de l'Ombre) isn't much more than an old-fashioned action flick but with plucky gals doing the undercover war work of spying, seducing and shooting.
Appropriately for the time of rationing, each girl has only one defining characteristic. Tough Jeanne (Julie Depardieu) is a tart with a heart, Gaelle (Déborah François) is an innocent yet knows her explosives, showgirl Suzy (Marie Gillain) is recovering from an affair with a high-ranking Nazi officer, Countess Maria Luzzato (Maya Sansa) is avenging her murdered Jewish parents, and their leader Louise (Sophie Marceau) has a jaw that must ache from all that determined jutting.
The recruitment process is conducted with all the gravity of assembling the Dirty Dozen, but glamour clearly takes precedence over historical detail, with our heroines running around France with high-maintenance hairstyles and a large wardrobe of nip-waisted dresses and heels. But there's more depth than usual to the Nazi officer, Col Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu), there's a subway sequence of real tension, and the performances carry the film over its bumpier patches. Dreadful title though.
On general release from Friday
THE WAITING ROOM (15)
***A well-intentioned, emotionally dreary look at the tangled love lives of a group of Londoners. Anne-Marie Duff is a single mother having an affair with her married neighbour (Rupert Graves). Ralf Little ignores his girlfriend's biological clock. And Frank Finlay gets the wooden spoon as yet another loveable eccentric pensioner, who hangs around the railway station every day waiting for his wife to come home.
On general release
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