Michelle Williams is Dying for It
Michelle Williams stars in FX’s Dying for Sex.
It is her best performance yet. Better even than her stellar work in Blue Valentine (2010) and Manchester by the Sea (2016).
Dying for Sex hooks into the duality of life. The life force derived from sexual pleasure and the emotional pain of death.
Creator/showrunner/writers Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock have mustered an immense amount of courage to bring this true story to life, not just because of its sexual frankness, but because it gives permission to feel everything—every ache, every giggle, every orgasmic gasp of breath—as a legitimate expression of being alive.
The show kicks off with Michelle Williams’ health problems. But this lump of pain births a nugget of insight: that she has never known true sexual pleasure. This triggers her to gallop into the universe of dating apps, romance schemes, and sex parties. For her, chasing pleasure is not an indulgence, it is a metaphysical protest. A battle cry.
First Williams makes the daring move to abandon her husband, played by the dweebish puppy dog Jay Duplass. He has become a caretaker, not a lover. And neither party is able to derive pleasure from the relationship.
In one embarrassing scene, Williams’ inner thoughts bubble up via VO:
“What if that’s the last time I had sex, half a blow job that made him cry?”
It’s a laugh-out-loud moment, reflective of the show’s tone, that points to a deeper truth: Williams' monogamistic relationship has inverted the meaning of sex, linking it with pain, not pleasure. Williams, suddenly stripped of a future, understands this. That all she has left is the power to reclaim her body, her pleasure, and her pain, before death silences all feeling.
So Williams begins sexually dominating men. It’s all consensual and hilarious like when she penis-shames, kicks a guy in the dick, and pees on a dude in a dog costume. It’s not played as a sexual power trip, which allows her to root out why she enjoys domination. It all comes to a head in one beautiful scene where Williams erupts in an interpretive dance, a fluid, smoldering release of pain.
The release allows her to find love with a sexual partner.
The show is a redemption story that suggests that intimacy in all its messiness is not a detour from healing, but the very medicine that makes life bearable.
Watching Dying for Sex, I marveled at the cinematic work of directors Shannon Murphy (Babyteeth) and Chris Teague (Only Murders in the Building), who have a keen understanding of emphasizing Williams' POV. They do so with a SnorriCam, careful use of wide-angle lenses, and creamy telephoto shots that make the world around her disappear. It is rare for a television show to not only dramatize suffering but to sanctify it, to allow sorrow to coexist with absurdity, and to pose the question: what if letting go of who you thought you had to be is the only way to truly live?
The show is now available on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
For More:
Dying for Sex trailer. Bring some tissues.