In 1969 Saatchi & Saatchi designed a poster of a pregnant man for the Family Planning Association. “Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?” caused outrage and is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Ladies First, a trite Netflix role-reversal drama, will be lucky if anyone remembers it by Christmas.
But the talent! Rosamund Pike, Fiona Shaw, Sacha Baron Cohen, Charles Dance, Emily Mortimer – even Richard E Grant is pitifully underused as a vagrant-sage with pigeons sitting on his head, an absurdist touch that is less funny than director Thea Sharrock evidently thought it would be. Comedy-Drama-London also has a prominent role, a city where everyone lives in a Victorian terrace, works in a sleek skyscraper and has revelatory conversations on a bench at the top of Parliament Hill.
Occasionally the action decamps to a manor house in the Cotswolds, where Britons shag in four-poster beds for an American audience. Fortunately, given the lack of chemistry between Pike and Baron Cohen, the camera pans away after a kiss and brief who’s-on-top-then frolic.
Baron Cohen plays Damien Sachs, an unreconstructed sexist who is about to be promoted to the CEO of an ad agency called Atlas. Mad Men showed how to set a punchy drama in the world of advertising, but Ladies First has neither the time nor the inclination to make the most of the opportunity.
Damien has just forced Alex (Pike) out of her job and pursues her furiously out of the building, walking into a lamppost. When he comes to, a couple of female paramedics are asking him if he’s on the pill, because the side-effects can be really rough.
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You will have guessed the rest. Alex is now his boss, women are in control and men are expected to shut up and look good. Junk food now comes from Burger Queen and Five Gals. Damien depilates himself (“Veet for smooth balls!”, an image you will not easily forget), gets some penile filler (ouch!) and visits Victor’s Secret for a testicle bra fitting (“Do you need help getting them in?”).
Roadworkers catcall him. His female relatives demand beers and fart proudly on the sofa. It is predictable fun, but unfortunately it has to come to an end as Grant tells him that the only way to return to the real world is to be promoted to CEO despite the female forces ranged against him. This means sleeping with the woman in charge.
Fiona Shaw once played Richard II, and there is a certain bathos to watching her pleasure herself in a gaping bathrobe as Baron Cohen impersonates a scantily clad cowboy. Her performance is by far the most accomplished of the film, but it is still a relief when she does not survive the night. Fans of Pike, also a talented actress when she has decent material, will find her performance perfunctory.
Ladies First is the redemption story of A Christmas Carol, with no poignancy, no heart and played entirely for laughs. It rapidly flags, and the final half-hour consists of Pike and Baron Cohen phoning in some completely unmemorable lines. The problem, of course, is that he was funnier when he was playing unreconstructed Damien and getting his balls waxed.
The drama has nothing to say about the relationship between men and women except that it is unfair and very sexist: while women will find things to chuckle at, I suspect male viewers will find it rather patronising. Some of the comedy is very strained, too.
In the female-dominated world, Damien acquires a cat that shows him unwanted affection. The cat does its best. Mostly, though, this is a waste of some talented actors.
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The plot dares not take a single dramatic risk. What was Sharrock, a director who has pivoted to film over the past decade after an impressive record in London theatre, thinking of?
And there is a nasty undercurrent of misogyny, as Ladies First mocks the painful efforts women make to accommodate ourselves to the male gaze. The implication is clear. No man would ever be this stupid, and if they did, they’d at least be funny about it.
When Baron Cohen wears the cowboy costume to titillate Shaw, he keeps his distance as she gasps on the sofa. I doubt any woman who has felt unable to resist her boss’s advances emerged from the encounter so unviolated.
In real life, Shaw is just 13 years older than Baron Cohen, a gulf Ladies First cannot begin to process. Still, it’s just a laugh, isn’t it? You don’t want to think about that kind of thing late on a weekend night – or have to see Shaw again after her fatal orgasm.
By all means watch the first hour for a few giggles, but the rest is dross.
Ladies First is on Netflix. Ros Taylor hosts the More Jam Tomorrow and Oh God, What Now? podcasts
