Paying For It

April 17

7 pm
PG — 1hr 25min
2024 ‧ Comedy

The backstory alone is unlike anything else: filmmaker/musician Sook-Yin Lee and cartoonist Chester Brown were in a romantic relationship back in the ’90s, and when Lee broke it off, Brown decided to hire sex workers rather than look for another girlfriend — a lifestyle he chronicled in his graphic novel Paying for It in 2011. Now, the adaptation of that graphic novel has been directed and co-written by Lee, bringing the singular story full-circle.

It’s a fascinating situation that’s just as messy in practice as it seems like it would be a theory. Paying for It stars Dan Beirne as Chester and Emily Lê as a barely-fictionalized version of Sook-Yin named Sonny, and they soft-launch their breakup in the opening scene, with Sonny saying that she’s falling for someone else and asking for Chester’s permission to pursue that budding relationship.

That sorta-kinda breakup becomes permanent, but rather than moving out of their shared home in Kensington Market, Chester simply drags a mattress down into the basement, where he can hear his ex-girlfriend having sex and fighting with her new boyfriend just upstairs. It’s the kind of codependent tangle that seems to make sense at the time.

The film is glimpse into a very specific time and place, when two people who cared about each other made some very surprising decisions in order to maintain that closeness. It’s frankly amazing that they were willing to tell this story at all, as Paying for It is a wonderful bit of oversharing that audiences should be grateful for.