Crippling fantasies

Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed and plays the title role in Don Jon, a film about a young man who earned his nickname through his polished routine of bedding beautiful women. But Jon also spends hours online looking at pornography, and he admits that he prefers pornography to sex with actual women.

Jon’s routine is predictably interrupted when he meets Barbara, played by Scarlett Johansson. Barbara is not about to fall into bed with Jon. She withholds sex and uses it as a tool to shape Jon into her perfect boyfriend.

But the film veers away from being a romantic comedy: Don Jon is not about a pornography addict saved by a good woman. It’s about the unhealthy collision of two people who are ready only for severely broken relationships. Jon’s addiction to pornography crashes into the ideals of a pampered princess; Barbara, like Jon, seems unable to grapple with reality.