The Year I Started Masturbating Review: Also known as Året jag slutade prestera och började onanera, the Swedish raunchy dramedy film starring Katia Winter as Hanna, Jesper Zuschlag as Morten, Nour El-Refai as Carolin, Vera Carlbom as Liv, Hannes Fohlin as Adam and others has been directed by Erika Wasserman. She’s co-written it alongside Christin Magdu and Bahar Pars.
Based on Sandra Dahlén’s book Hallongrottan, which also makes an appearance in the film, the Katia Winter starrer has a runtime of 1hour 41 minutes. Both English subtitles and audio are available for it on Netflix.
The Year I Started Masturbating Review Contains Spoilers
The Year I Started Masturbating Synopsis
This Swedish story is about Hanna, an overachieving woman approaching her 40s striving for perfectionism at every corner. Giving her all to her well-earning job, she’s not always able to make enough time for her family, and as expected, her partner, Morten believes her job to be the prime factor in creating a rift between their small family, and her becoming self-absorbed.
Hanna also hopes to have another baby with her partner before it’s too late for her. But with barely any time on her hand to keep up with their present situation, Morten constantly pesters her about quitting her job, and so, she does. Eventually, this incident coincides with Morten breaking up with her and pushing Hanna to the streets. Having spent her well-earned money on her extravagant tastes earlier, she has nowhere to go. As the cherry on top, her best friend of years also cuts ties with her after having a baby and being influenced by her husband’s words.
She finds recluse with old contacts she hasn’t reached out to in years, while also receiving lessons from another friend of hers about pleasing herself and prioritising her needs and happiness first, which finds weight in her discovery of masturbation ultimately.
The Year I Started Masturbating Review: Discussion
If you’re a binge watcher of American series, you’ll instantly catch on to Katia Winter’s familiar looks, and that’s because she’s previously featured in shows like Sleepy Hollow as Katrina Crane, Dexter as Nadia, even DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, a few episodes of the Amazon original The Boys and more. There’s no doubt that she’s the highlight of the film, but it mostly has to do with how the movie doesn’t leave you with any consequential or memorable characters at all.
The image of masturbation has been essentially incorporated into the storyline in order to better vocalise the concept of self-love and one’s happiness, which in turn helps you keep a good outlook with the people around you. Although the intentions are sound enough, the movie seems to be excessively pushing for the practice of self-pleasure as a means of magical resolution. Once Hanna dives in and explores herself for the first time, the whole thing is made out to be like an extended commercial with romanticised visuals that equally go along with the same vision.
While it’s good and much-needed to speak about this aspect of one’s life, especially since the film attempts to accurately (moderately) convey awareness surrounding the matter, it does not work well in terms of building up the characters we meet therein. Even early on, it feels as if the movie is ready to start a crucial conversation around gender roles, but it completely drops it mid-air.
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Thereafter, Hanna’s relationship with Morten is also magically resolved as they feel the cupid tug again and get pulled back to each other, after a series of failed relationships along the way, of course. Their initial tensions just dissipate without making a sound (and without us getting a better look into their relationship either), once they move on from their respective rather newer partners, and Morten starts finding Hanna “more chill” (all thanks to her having found a new hobby – masturbation). Despite having a son together, nothing on the profound scale about their bond is ever probed into.
The entire film appears as one of those discardable fashion magazines that sought to have raised many questions, but ultimately render all the (minimal) effort in vain. Not for once did I turn back and found any heartfelt emotion when I looked at either of the characters introduced to us, nor was there any worthwhile comedy to hang back for. Possibly the only and the cutest relationship therein is the one Hanna has with her son, but even that isn’t tested enough.
Ultimately the movie ends with Hanna declining her promotion, and though it’s supposed to make us feel that she’s doing it to complete her character arc, with stirring emotions having awakened her about how she doesn’t need to strive for perfection to have a happy life, it all comes crashing and ends up looking like she’s just settled for less.
Final Thoughts
By the end of the nearly 2 hours long movie (minus 20 minutes), I was only left with two questions in mind – Why did I just watch this? What did I gain from watching it? And the answer to both of these questions is a bleak silence struggling to find its way out to better things.
I wouldn’t recommend this one to anyone, not even erotica admirers, because, frankly speaking, the movie isn’t even raunchy enough to be labelled as one. It has no chaotic sequences that make you laugh, except the one time maybe when Hanna’s friend helps her visualise masturbation in detail using pizza and its toppings, but even after that, there’s barely any sex education tips for us to remember either.
The Year I Started Masturbating is now streaming on Netflix.
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