A Complete History of My Sexual Failures

2008
6.2| 1h30m| en| More Info
Released: 19 January 2008 Released
Producted By: EM Media
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

The egocentric documentary-maker Chris Waitt traces his romantic ineptitude and sexual impotence through awkward interviews with irate ex-girlfriends and stunts involving S&M parlours, Harley Street doctors and Viagra overdoses. The results are often hilarious, sometimes moving and speak directly to the hapless paramour in all of us.

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Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful
HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.
Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
scorpioneagle this movie can only be used as torture in some nasty war as first this whole so called "director" makes you wanna s hit his face who is a actor with a main role in his own movie you cant ignore the ba*** the whole movie is about nothing it starts like a crap it gets even more humilating and it just wont end when you think now it has to be over the movie goes for another hour... getting worser... only good thing in this movie (its definitely not a documentary) is a promise of being interesting but when you see this main role actor you just want to sh*t on his face in short the whole movie is just about a director playing main role for hour an dhalf just because he needs soooooo hard that people sh it on his face thats the whole point of this movie yes there where 2 small aspect interesting of 3 mins in movie of 95 minutes...
Meg Butler Top 3 Reasons to Watch the Documentary A Complete History of My Sexual Failures. 1. The Plot. So Chris Waitt is an attractive, intelligent Englishman who can't figure out why his girlfriend's keep dumping him. So he decides to take a video camera and delve into his past relationships to find out why. What ensues is a hilariously tragic, painful, embarrassing affirmation of the fact that most of us never ask our friends, family and exes "what's wrong with me" because we really don't want to know the answer. This guy had the cojones to ask the question and he spends the rest of the movie getting kicked in them as all his delusions of grandeur are picked apart by various exes and one blind date.2. The embarrassment. Oh, it's unending: the self-deprication, the shame...oh the shame. Embarrassment is now my new favorite genre of movie. It's funny because it's not happening to you, and extra funny because it could be. Boy memory is cruel. Self esteem and forgetfulness gloss a lot of things over. But some people really, really hate you. You get the feeling that if brains did a better job of remembering those hundreds of painful, embarrassing moments then Chris would not have put forth so much effort to unearth them. And I would have missed out on an opportunity to laugh until I cried.3. The realities. He hears what every one of his ex-girlfriends has to say about him and it isn't good. He finds out what a blind date has to say about him. It isn't good. He gets a medical evaluation of himself. It really, really isn't good. And all of it is hilariously terrible and comically timed. Please, please watch this movie.My favorite quotes: "Chris: I was just trying to be myself. Mary: Next time be somebody else."; "I seem to have put her off an entire race of men. Maybe this is a bigger problem than I thought."
nqure I remember reading reviews, some quite negative, about Chris Waitt's film and I think a few might not have got the conceit; the film is more of a mockumentary, with the audience laughing with and at Waitt; it is the comedy of embarrassment rather than a genuine examination of romantic relationships.First of all, I'd like to put on record that Waitt comes across as a fundamentally good-natured, if lazy, shambling shaggy-dog of a man (shaggy dog story), essentially quite lovable. Compared to the way some men treat women, Waitt is not that bad a person: his main faults appear to be laziness and a lack of commitment.As the film progressed, it became obvious that a lot of the scenes had been set-up (his exasperated producers, a blind-date) and too many of the people inhabit Waitt's media world making you doubt its veracity (one ex is an actress, he ends up finding love with a journalist). It is a piece of guerilla/gonzo film making with the film-maker's mother becoming a character, exasperated at her son's feckless behaviour, with her pithy comments.The first girlfriend, it is eventually revealed, was from Waitt's childhood (eleven), so completely undercutting the adult conversation and our expectations. I don't doubt many of Waitt's former girlfriends refused to appear, but maybe that was more to do with appearing on film than with Waitt himself. The scene with the girlfriend hidden in a hotel room and then giving her scathing comments via a machine obscuring her voice came across as comedic as did the encounter with an ex- in the Indian restaurant; it emerges that since Waitt, she has only gone out with Asian men. It then becomes obvious that the film is sending up both Waitt and romance as he pushes things to the extreme.Halfway through the film, I began to lose interest and decided to catch up the highlights of the Football League Show on another channel before catching the end of the film. It isn't serious enough to deserve full attention.The film does end on a more serious, optimistic note. At the beginning of the film, one ex-girlfriend from his teenage years is asked what she learnt from the end of their relationship and she replies about learning to do things differently and,in a sense, this is the lesson Waitt learns as well as appreciating a former girlfriend and the love she felt for him.The film is faintly reminiscent of John Cusack's role in Nick Hornby's 'High Fidelity', (a more conventionally structured and narrative driven account) also punctuated with moments of embarrassing comedy (the ex-girlfriend traumatised from the break-up).
transient-2 I'll say first that I empathize with this narrator and I found this film to be well worth the time. However, having seen far more personal and daring attempts at catharsis I was put off by the film's consistent, crass disingenuity. Within the first ten minutes, it becomes clear that the narrator's quest to pursue the "history of his failed relationships" is merely a narcissistic attempt to further reinforce the high opinion he holds for himself. This is a fantasy rock-star gratifying himself with a wink to the camera, evidenced more by the passive-aggressive and flippant attitude he displays toward the people who've touched him than by the headphones he costumes around his neck. At the beginning of the film we are introduced to a list of his ex-girlfriends, which we should note is average or above average in length for a man his age, a man who is not physically unattractive. He crassly reintroduces himself to each of the lovely women who've left him with obvious disregard for the people they've become, and we retain the impression that he's carried his camera crew with either bitterness or adolescent bravado to their door for a boast. We see him coaxing smiles from attractive young women on the roadside who giggle and coo for his attentions; we see his mother chide him for having ignored the amorous letters of the many women who've adored him, even as he suppresses a smile; we see him make a fool of "geeky" skateboarders, as if his own ostentatious display of guitars didn't evidence some puerile naivete. All this within the first ten minutes - and is all this to establish some wobbly foundation from which he'll fall, and in the throes of personal agony lay himself raw to some revelation? Perhaps, in the last ten minutes. The majority of the film speaks more to pathos than tragedy. The story unfolds as we loathe to expect: he returns to each of his ex-girlfriends to remind them of how he humiliated them the first time, and it will be a pleasure if he can do so again. He even goes through the motions of finding a new girlfriend (since by now we've established firmly that finding a new girlfriend has NEVER been the problem) just so he can vent even more hostility in systematically rejecting and dismissing them all. He just can't seem to find the committed, genuine anger or the beating he wants as a response - not from a counselor, whose words lack the pain and not from a dominatrix, whose pain is misspoken. By the time our hero takes his Viagra and we're equally convinced his problems have nothing to do with sex, just as our 'documentary' seems to devolve into a time-wasting farce, he narrows to his last, most meaningful interview. Hostility is funny but it can't replace an apology. Now the perennial question 'why did you dump me?' is marked by a more tender, anxious delivery. Even as our imagination pads the brevity of this conversation with some depth, one can't help but wonder to what extent, wiping her tears, this woman also felt used. Who couldn't love the way it ends.