Synopsis: Sex is. Love isn’t.

Jamie Harris (Marguerite Moreau) is a 25-year-old self-proclaimed “jerk magnet.” After determining not to spend the rest of her life as “the easy chick,” she gets involved in a romantic triangle with 2 great guys (2004 Tony winner Brian F. O’Byrne and “Lost’s” Naveen Andrews), only to discover that love is anything but easy.
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Easy 7.5

‘Easy’ is a romantic drama about a young woman who has long used sex to attract men, but either has reeled in the wrong kind or hasn’t been able to keep them. So she decides on a new strategy: to be celibate for a while and completely bypass the usual pitfalls of her romantic life.

I like that this film goes with an alternate look at relationships and sexuality, that it takes real-world approaches to problems that some people might face – instead of doing it out of some sort of religious motivation by the filmmakers (“Yay! It’s fun being a born-again virgin!” or “Be celibate, or suffer the fires of H-E-L-L!!!” ).

After all, celibacy can be a choice for any number of people, for any number of reasons, irrespective of one’s thoughts on marriage or God. It just might work for some, and I don’t think there’s any reason to judge or mock that – as one might tend to do in our culture (“Really? You’re actually choosing to not do the funky chicken? Why would you do something like THAT?!” ). Of course, there may be reasons why it’s unhealthy (i.e. when it’s motivated by fear/insecurity), but that’s up to the individual to sort out.

I also found that ‘Easy’ is very accepting of various living arrangements, non-hetero parenthood, multiracial coupling, …etc., and that appealed to me. It’s unafraid to explore relationships in general, and I think that it does so soberly and with class, even if it tends to contrive a little drama into them along the way. Perhaps real people have these types of dramas, but I can’t really relate with it. Which I think that makes me a robot.

My only real gripe about this film is that all of the main characters end up with happy endings, often with each other. This made me think of certain plays, which, being limited by the numbers of players they can have on stage, ensure that everyone gets a pleasant twist before bidding their audiences goodnight. However, in a film that is meant to recollect everyday life, I found it all too convenient.

While I couldn’t see myself in any of ‘Easy’s characters, I found them effortlessly likeable in one way or another, and we understood them well enough that their romantic entanglements made sense. The film’s core message is that Love isn’t easy, and it does an admirable job of exploring some of its many permutations and complications.