DVD "Find" of the Week: YPF

To get it over with YPF is the advertising-friendly moniker for YOUNG PEOPLE FUCKING, a title

that, although it's likely to drive away some of its intended audience (who would love this movie if only they gave it a chance), explains its content better than any other title I can imagine. Divided into sections such as "foreplay," "interlude" and "orgasm," the movie is truly sexual. But unlike Shortbus, a film I love equally well and that offers hardcore delights along with its humor and feeling, YPF is much more visually discreet. We view a few boobs and butts along the way, but little of the nether regions, let alone any male equipment standing at attention. Yet, given the exceedingly smart and believable dialog on display, we don't need anything more.

An ensemble piece featuring four couples and one very odd and endearing threesome, YPF was directed by Swiss-born Canadian Martin Gero (shown top, left), whose first outing as a director this is. He's co-written the movie with one of his actors, Aaron Abrams (top, right), and together with a splendid cast of those titular "young people" -- all of them eager, good-looking and talented -- Gero & Abrams show us the pleasures, fears and surprises found in sexual coupling via dialog, backstory and moment-to-moment acting/living that is about as good as this genre provides (as good as I have so far seen, at least).

Each couple/threesome is given its due, and while most of the stories/characters are likable and humane, the film is nonetheless full of the pitfalls of modern life, love and relationships. It's also Canadian, which -- typically enough for some of our more stupid and knee-jerk critics -- makes it an easy butt of jokes. I don't really understand this, as Canada continues to give us so much that's good and original (Slings & Arrows, Snow Cake and The Drowsy Chaperone, to name a few), and its creative people continue to head south where they enrich America's arts no end. (And, no, I am not myself Canadian, though I have often wished to be over these past eight years.)

In any case, I highly recommend YPF, if you're looking for 90 minutes of interesting fun about a subject important to all of us: young or old, of any political or religious stripe. If only for the series of sharp, brief visual moments in which one couple (played by Mr. Abrams and Carly Pope) discovers the surprise and wonder of achieving sexual bliss with someone that each cares for, the movie's a must. This little moment of heaven, beautifully created by Gero, Abrams, Pope, cinematographer Arthur E. Cooper and editor Mike Banas is amazing. If you've experienced the real thing, you're lucky. If not, well, you've got YPF to satisfy you until then.