CHASING a shag? There’s no better way than boring your partner into desperate measures with a three-hour subtitled movie about weighty matters, like these:
The Irishman (Martin Scorcese, 2019)
On paper seems viable, a Mafia plotline and a powerful cast, and if you click in quick enough she’ll never spot that it’s 209 minutes long. Half an hour in you’ve laughed all you can at doddering young De Niro. Two hours in you’ve ploughed through two bottles of rosé and f**k on the couch without even turning it off.
127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010)
For the hopeful shagger on a tighter timeline, this movie is a swift 93 minutes but still convinces even even the most responsive boyfriend to once again look at you like a viable sexual alternative. When a man’s hacking his own arm off in a Utah canyon this is getting paused and you’ll never go back. Now’s the time to make your move.
Hiroshima mon amour (Alan Resnais, 1959)
Again short but so intensely French, with so many longing glances and silent scenes, your girlfriend will tire of waiting for them to start boning and give up and initiate foreplay herself. Helps that it’s black and white and penetratingly dull.
The Godfather Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990)
This is playing the long game. First you hit your boyfriend with Parts I and II, leading them to believe a crowning cinematic experience is forthcoming. Then you stick this on. Poleaxed by how shit it is, he’ll be desperate to stop the film nobody has ever finished by making love to you. It’s the perfect crime. Don Corleone would approve.
Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson, 1981)
Long, grim, serious and subtitled, this is the ultimate Netflix and chill movie. Sell it as a war epic, up periscope, man the torpedoes and strap in. An hour of this and your clumsy caresses will be welcomed like you’re Casanova, not a fat bloke who had microwave garlic chicken an hour and a half ago.
