'Dying for Sex' is this century's kinky, horny 'Love Story'

The caller FX bid “Dying for Sex” is galore things — a showcase for Michelle Williams and a stellar supporting cast, an open-hearted glimpse into erotic exploration and a reminder that we would each bash good to unrecorded arsenic if our clip connected this world was constricted due to the fact that it is.

It could besides beryllium this century’s “Love Story.”

In 1970, Erich Segal’s communicative of a young culture-clashing mates undone by terminal unwellness near millions sobbing unneurotic successful their seats. Despite immoderate critics who considered it contrived and sentimental, ”Love Story” became, and remains (adjusted for inflation), 1 of the highest-grossing films successful history. It received 7 Oscar nominations (winning for score), launched a taste tagline (“Love means ne'er having to accidental you’re sorry”) and prompted thousands of young women to instrumentality soft lessons truthful they could play the iconic taxable opus and weep.

Deathbed scenes person ever been a portion of movie and television, but aft “Love Story,” terminal unwellness became a cinematic genre. “Bang the Drum Slowly,” “Brian’s Song,” “Something for Joey,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Beaches,” “Shadowlands,” “Stepmom,” “One True Thing,” “The Big C,” “The Fault successful Our Stars” — the database goes connected and on.

And it present includes “Dying for Sex,” an iteration truthful modern it is adapted from a podcast, disposable connected a streamer (Hulu, starting Friday) and framed astir a travel into the BDSM experience.

It’s besides funny, heartbreaking, profoundly humane and much than occasionally insightful arsenic hell. Sex and decease person ne'er been specified bittersweet bedmates.

Molly (Michelle Williams) chooses to permission Steve (Jay Duplass) aft her crab returns.

(Sarah Shatz / FX)

Based connected the eponymous Wondery podcast by Nikki Boyer, successful which a pistillate with cancer, Molly Kochan, shared her intersexual escapades and insights earlier her decease successful 2018, “Dying for Sex” doesn’t, er, pussyfoot astir the communicative it wants to tell. We conscionable Molly (Michelle Williams) successful a therapy league with her husband, Steve (Jay Duplass), who is trying to mansplain wherefore they don’t person sex. Molly’s years-long combat with bosom crab made it difficult; present that she wants to resume, Steve remains reluctant.

In the mediate of the session, Molly receives the quality that her crab has metastasized; further attraction whitethorn widen her beingness but not for long. She flees the session, takes structure successful a adjacent bodega and calls her person Nikki (Jenny Slate), with whom she has the astir hilarious “I’m dying” speech successful the past of television, which rapidly devolves into a screaming lucifer betwixt Nikki and the proprietor of the bodega. “She’s an actress,” Molly says of Nikki. “Her emotions unrecorded precise adjacent to the surface.”

Like galore facing specified a dire prognosis, Molly is determined to walk the remainder of her beingness doing precisely what she wants to do. And what she wants to bash is not reassure her spouse that their emotion was ever capable oregon hole her household for her demise oregon spell disconnected connected a bucket-list jaunt with her champion friends. No, she wants to person sex, mind-blowing, forget-the-world-and-all-its-turmoil sex, that volition see experiencing orgasm with a partner, thing she has ne'er done.

Steve is simply a nonstarter; he’s much funny successful monitoring Molly’s sweetener intake than bringing her to climax, insisting alternatively that her abrupt tendency is simply a morbid manifestation of unresolved puerility trauma — Molly was molested by her mother’s boyfriend. He’s not wholly wrong, but work the room, man. Buoyed by an unexpected sex-positive speech with palliative-care societal idiosyncratic Sonya (Esco Jouléy), Molly moves successful with Nikki, telling her, ”I don’t privation to dice with Steve; I privation to dice with you.” She past embarks connected a intersexual odyssey that, aft a fewer mendacious starts, reveals her penchant for dominance and submission.

So not precisely “Beaches.” But, you know, benignant of.

Don’t get maine wrong, “Dying for Sex” is precise overmuch astir sex. Written by Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock, the amusement takes the request for erotic pleasance seriously. With a pixie haircut, overalls and stripey sweaters, Molly is simply a quiet-voiced, waifish imagination miss whom Williams makes incandescent with tendency and conscionable plain horniness. Sure, her request to grounds dominance and consciousness the titillating powerfulness of submission could beryllium work arsenic metaphors for an effort to some summation power implicit her assemblage and judge that it is shutting down. But “Dying for Sex” is, mercifully, little funny successful psychoanalyzing her, oregon anyone, than it is successful nonjudgmentally presenting the galore paths to consensual intersexual pleasance and fun.

Though Molly’s extremity of communal orgasm remains elusive and she is, rather literally, haunted by her puerility trauma, the men and women she meets connected her BDSM travel are playful, benignant and often rather wise. In a stand-out performance, Jouléy’s Sonya is simply a near-angelic span betwixt Molly’s roles arsenic terminal diligent and intersexual explorer. “You aboriginal millennials are truthful tragic,” she tells Molly and Nikki. “You deliberation enactment is conscionable penetration and orgasm.”

Sissy Spacek plays Gail, Molly’s estranged mother. (Sarah Shatz / FX)

Rob Delaney is Molly’s neighbor, with whom she has an unexpected and tender relationship. (Sarah Shatz / FX)

Like each bully terminal-illness tale, however, “Dying for Sex” is besides precise overmuch astir love. Self-love, certainly, but each the different kinds arsenic well. A grouchy, slovenly neighbour (played with sad-sack sexiness by Rob Delaney) accidentally introduces her to the pleasures of dominance and submission, and their encounters pb to an affectional tenderness neither expected to find. Molly besides indispensable travel to presumption with her estranged mother, Gail (just erstwhile you deliberation the formed can’t get immoderate stronger, Sissy Spacek shows up), and she adjacent grants immoderate closure to Steve.

But the “Love Story” of “Dying for Sex” belongs to Nikki and Molly. Female relationship has go the affectional workhorse of modern play and comedy, but it’s pugnacious to deliberation of 1 much vividly depicted than this one. Slate’s comedic brilliance is simply a given, but her quality to propulsion disconnected some Nikki’s outward chaos — a bottomless purse, an inability to support way of time, a changeless whirlwind of wisecracking emotions — and the interior stillness of implicit knowing is breathtaking to watch.

Nikki is simply a blistery messiness who knows precisely what needs to beryllium done. Her champion person volition soon beryllium gone from this earth, truthful thing other matters much than being with and supporting her close up until the precise end. Yes, it comes astatine a terms — Nikki gets booted from a play, loses her boyfriend, celebrates Hanukkah successful the hallway of her flat gathering — but truthful beryllium it. She volition person nary regrets, and fixed the circumstances, that is the champion she tin anticipation for.

Are you crying yet? You volition be.

“Dying for Sex” is astatine times a spot excessively “perfect” to beryllium cleanable — neither Molly nor Nikki is working, but determination ne'er seems to beryllium immoderate interest astir money; the aesculapian attraction Molly receives is ever attentive and disposable (Sonya is, arsenic antecedently noted, an angel); and Steve gets kicked to the curb beauteous brutally — caring for idiosyncratic with crab is incredibly difficult.

But that’s each post-mortem nitpicking, easy overlooked by the powerfulness of the performances, the hilarious courageousness of the penning and the glorious reconstruction of a acquainted genre.

As “Love Story” proved each those years ago, we each request an excuse to sob successful the acheronian together.