Would you go out with this man?

I can't get over the faces of the women he interviews as they explain exactly why they had to leave him. Waitt is the boyfriend from hell - chronically late, selfish, broke. As the evidence mounts up, he realises he even forgot to sleep with them.

In the process of constructing his own bumbling, guerrilla narrative (can anyone out-parody YouTube these days?), Waitt goes to the edge, taking dangerous quantities of Viagra and being flagellated by a dominatrix (who rather impressively sees her role as punishing his behaviour to women).

It's brave of him to tackle male sexual dysfunction, and mental health issues, but the girlfriends never get a proper right to reply - they are just extras in his movie.

It's his failure to listen, to see other people in 3D, that is so heartbreaking. Women need explanations - we need to hear what went wrong, even if it really was just a failure of nerve, or a lack of love. In one awful sequence we see the letters that one ex, Olivia, wrote him, begging him to phone or write to her. She is going mad with not knowing: "It's like waiting for my exam results," she writes piteously. It's like something out of an epistolary novel.

The footage of Vicky, his one true love, is agonising. Though she's now with another man, expecting his child, the memories of her relationship with Chris reduce her to tears and incoherence. It's the one time the film really sparks - proving that poignancy can't be faked on camera. Much of the rest is stagey slapstick.

The point is, despite his assertion, Waitt was never really dumped by any of them; he manipulated his lovers through his bad behaviour until they had to break loose. Then they ended up shouldering the guilt.

Everyone needs to see this film - young women particularly - but somehow I can't enjoy the joke as much as I'd like to. Waitt gets away with his behaviour (and, by the end, is rewarded with a gorgeous Russian girlfriend) and doesn't seem to have learned anything.

The real star of the film is Waitt's level-headed, Home Counties mother (every slacker has one). But isn't she, too, complicit? By indulging his self-pity and tidying his charmless flat she has stopped her son ever taking responsibility. Mothers of future British filmmakers please take note.

A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures
Cert: 18