If men have been waiting for their own Sex and the City, here they got it. No stitching, no wrapping up and no taboos. Because Sook-Yin Lee’s Paying for It is painfully real – the story is an adaptation of a graphic novel by the director’s ex-boyfriend. Stories about breakups are difficult, even more so when they involve us, and the characters in this film find it very hard to break up.  

Emily Lê (Sonny) and Dan Beirne (Chester) did not have an easy task, as they had to play out difficult emotions that involved real people who are still alive, and on top of that, one of the people involved in this relationship was the director of this film, and the other published a comic book on the subject. A bit twisted, but such things have not happened in cinematography before. One of the most famous breakups, told in a similar way, was Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) and Spike Jonze’s answer – Her (2013). Both films dealt with the breakup of the two directors, but each in their own way portrayed in an artistic style what they felt at the time.   

There are no reproaches in Sook-Yin Lee’s Paying for It, but instead there is a lot of understanding of how different a relationship can be. There is no single prescription, no single recipe for life – although mutual agreement is a prerequisite. We often have a propensity to moralize, to say what’s appropriate and what’s not. This film puts us in perhaps even uncomfortable places at times, but that’s our problem. Let him who sees it be ashamed. In Paying for It, basically, moralizing has no place, similarly, nothing is shown to shock us. It’s simply a story about different kinds of love. 

It should be noted that Paying for It is also a feast for the eyes. Temporally set in the late 90s and early 00s, the film was shot in a very retro way. The colors, the music, the spaces – everything here is very believable. Sonny is growing up to a lot of things before our eyes, going through relationships with different men. Chester, on the other hand, discovers previously unknown territories of pleasure. Each of them learns to be with other people, but perhaps most importantly with themselves. 

Kinga Majchrzak