Top Box Office Movies - I Am a Sex Addict

I Am a Sex Addict (2006) IFC
1 hr. 38 mins.
Starring: Caveh Zahedi, Amanda Henderson, Rebecca Lord, Emily Morse
Directed by: Caveh Zahedi
This film is rated: NR

I Am a Sex Addict

Rating:

E-MAIL FRANK OCHIENG

Photo: IFC

Writer-director-star Caveh Zahedi comes clean with his comically raw and invigorating carnal memoirs pertaining to his wild ride of eroticism in I Am a Sex Addict. Although grainy and as dank as a two-bit porno shop on the outskirts of town, Zahedi’s flesh-flavoring fable is perversely provocative in its personalized seedy sensationalism. As a filmmaker, Zahedi unabashedly explores his undefined depravity in all its desired tendencies and makes no bones about his confessional celluloid exploits. I Am a Sex Addict is about a complex man that harbors a psychological compulsion to bury all his wayward whims in the abyss of the tawdry tarts and the sexual gymnastic that they can bring to his philandering psyche.

Some may find Zahedi’s brand of sexual scrutiny quite honest and liberating while others may shun the moviemaker’s misguided moral compass. Whatever the reactionary consensus, I Am a Sex Addict is bewildering yet interesting in its candidness and self-pointed cynicism. It’s safe to say that everyone has a dark side where temptation and titillation cuddle up more convincingly than a swinger’s convention on Valentine’s Day. Well, Zahedi starkly reveals his preference for the inexplicable urges that overwhelms his sensibilities when it comes to steady relationships. Zahedi is an intense creature of habit where normal relationships are like delicate china on a shaky dining room table—sooner or later, these fragile specimens are bound to come crashing down.

In short, Zahedi isn’t the one for the conventional bonding of secure intimacy...well...maybe to a certain extent if it fits his convenient needs. He is, however, an individual that requires the feverish rush of a prostitute’s adventurous touch for wishful thinking gratification that defies the boundaries of ordinary lust and lurid imagination. Zahedi is the spoiled little boy that demands his excessive treacherous treats in an instant as the current candy he has sampled isn’t as satisfying or challenging for his hormonal tastes. As long as Zahedi can indulge in his elaborate sexual conquests that threaten to ruin the emotional connection he has with his wives/girlfriends/lovers, he will always be regarded as the Pied Piper of Impurity. Just what is it that overrules Zahedi’s ability to overcome his transgressions for salacious streetwalkers? And what is the missing link in his mindset that insists he cannot cope with a healthy love life while longing for sleazy encounters that last as long as a homemade ice cube in a volcano?

I Am a Sex Addict is potently effective because we have a lost soul whose narcissism and growing insecurities are quite compelling because both have a mental stronghold on this protagonist’s raging libido. There’s a quiet hostility and exuberant ambivalence about how captivating and creepy that Zahedi is in concept before the inquiring cameras about his penchant for naughtiness when it comes to cavorting with the street corner cuties that fulfills this man’s quest for stimulating playtime. We learn that for Zahedi, sex is a resourceful tool that strangely motivates him to be vibrantly alive—to give him the empowerment of his convictions, his energized livelihood. Apparently, animated sex is the religious experience and ritual-arousing relief that releases the feelings of despair, delight or determination—a culmination of vicarious thought processes looking to find meaning behind the artist’s impulsive behavior.

Physically anemic-looking with a limp body and resembling Emmy-winning actor Tony (“Monk”) Shaloub as an anorexic stand-in, Zahedi gleefully shares his mission with the audience in his willingness to relive his skin-induced “natural high”. The obvious trance that has him continuously craving the comforts of the prostitutes that serves his every fetish-oriented command of creative carousing is indeed spell-binding. Zahedi doesn’t flinch or feel reserved in his recollections about his “tip toeing through the tainted tulips” of flirtatious decadence. Plus, he seems matter-of-factly when it comes to outlining how his prostitute-loving pilgrimage has put a lingering damage on his existing standing with his other women that invaded his life—the assortment of ex-spouses and galpals that didn’t put up with Zahedi’s “fast food flings”. Even the display of home-movie footage shows the type of hustling chicks that Zahedi mingled with unapologetic panache.

Uniquely absorbing and self-deprecating in its brash spirit, I Am a Sex Addict delves into the mysteries of a tortured man that is the perpetual prisoner of his own probing proclivities. Zahedi’s exposing narrative is comprehensive in its inquiry about unresolved psychological completion but is more skillful at making viewers wonder about the effects of addiction (sex or otherwise) that has no particular rhyme or reason. In comparison, the nebbish Zahedi reminds one of a foreign Woody Allen whereas his work also echoes the bizarre impishness of self-examination concerning the convoluted politics of romance-sexual alienation/frustration.

What’s refreshing about Addict is that we’re not quite sure who the real victims are in this hedonistic account of curvy femme fatales and crushed commitments. Just who is the most vulnerable in this on-going episode of random sexual experimentation? Is it Zahedi and his deviant dalliances with the opportunistic hookers looking for a financial score? Maybe it’s the hookers themselves that depend on the Zahedis of the world to finance their tattered existences as a means of that cliched state of mind known as survival? Or how about Zahedi’s string of loving partners that all took a backseat to the troubled tramps that he favored for his escapist bout of exhibitionism? This probably doesn’t matter because the parties involved seem universally bound by the chains of emptiness.

Consequently, I Am a Sex Addict is ruthlessly frank in its freakish frivolity and absurdly lyrical in the grubby ramblings of its professed and confused cad—a wounded warrior caught up in the sexual stagnation of his lascivious leanings.

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Frank Ochieng
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