''Don Jon'' is a 2013 American
romantic comedy-drama
Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, il ...
film written and directed by
Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his feature directorial debut. The film stars Gordon-Levitt,
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Ingrid Johansson (; born November 22, 1984) is an American actress and singer. The List of highest-paid film actors, world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has been featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100, ''F ...
, and
Julianne Moore
Julie Anne Smith (born December 3, 1960), known professionally as Julianne Moore, is an American actress and children's author. Prolific in film since the early 1990s, she is known for her portrayals of emotionally troubled women in independent ...
, with
Rob Brown,
Glenne Headly,
Brie Larson, and
Tony Danza
Tony Danza (born Anthony Salvatore Iadanza; April 21, 1951) is an American actor and retired professional boxer. He is known for co-starring in the television series ''Taxi (TV series), Taxi'' (1978–1983) and ''Who's the Boss?'' (1984–1992 ...
in supporting roles. The film premiered under its original title ''Don Jon's Addiction'' at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023.
The festival has acted ...
on January 18, 2013, and was released in the United States on September 27, 2013. The film grossed $41 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics.
Plot
Jon Martello is a young Italian-American bartender and modern-day
Don Juan
Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni ( Italian), is a legendary fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women.
The original version of the story of Don Juan appears in the 1630 play (''The Trickster of Seville and t ...
living in New Jersey. He enjoys his independent life, which consists of working out, caring for his apartment, driving his 1972
Chevrolet Chevelle SS, going to church with his family, engaging in
casual sex
Casual sex is sexual activity that takes place outside a romantic relationship and implies an absence of commitment, emotional attachment, or familiarity between sexual partners. Examples are sexual activity while casually dating, one-nig ...
and excessively masturbating to
hardcore pornography
Hardcore pornography or hardcore porn is pornography that features detailed depictions of sexual organs or sexual acts such as sexual intercourse, vaginal, anal sex, anal, oral sex, oral, or Non-penetrative sex#Manual sex, manual intercourse; e ...
. Though he claims to enjoy sex, he finds it inferior to porn, to the point of having flashbacks that intrude into his daily life.
While at a nightclub with his two best friends, Jon meets Barbara Sugarman, a beautiful woman from an affluent background. Despite flirting, she declines his offer for a one-night stand. Jon becomes interested, hoping that sex with her will be more satisfying than his usual hookups, and asks her out after finding her on
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
. Barbara insists on a long-term courtship. Their relationship proceeds over a month and without sex. She pushes Jon to take a nighttime
community college
A community college is a type of undergraduate higher education institution, generally leading to an associate degree, certificate, or diploma. The term can have different meanings in different countries: many community colleges have an open enr ...
class to obtain a career outside the service industry, and he indulges her love of romance films, which he dismisses as fantasy. They meet each other's friends and families, and Jon's parents are immediately smitten by Barbara and hope they will marry.
Jon and Barbara finally have sex, but he is still dissatisfied. Barbara catches Jon watching porn and is disgusted, but he convinces her it was a joke email sent by a friend. As Barbara spends more time at his home, Jon resorts to watching porn on his cell phone. Jon takes great satisfaction in cleaning his apartment, but Barbara, considering it beneath him, insists he have her family's maid do the job. At his class, Jon catches Esthera middle-aged classmateweeping by herself, and when she sits next to him before the next class to explain herself, she sees porn on his phone. Esther later shocks Jon by handing him an erotic video which she believes has a healthier depiction of sex. Barbara discovers the porn in Jon's laptop
browser history and they fighthe insists that all men watch porn, but she breaks up with him anyway.
Jon watches an increased amount of porn and becomes emotionally withdrawn and erratic which leads to an incident of
road rage. His friend persuades him to finish his college class, where he sees Esther again, and after class they have sex in her car and discuss Jon's breakup. She asks why he loves porn, and he reveals that he gets "lost" in porn in a way he does not with a partner, and has been consuming porn since he was a kid. Jon insists he is not addicted to porn, but when he tries masturbating without it for a week as Esther suggests, he is unable to. Esther says porn has given Jon a skewed idea of what real sex is, and he does not intimately connect with his partners because he focuses merely on his own satisfaction. After suggesting they take a bath together at her home, Esther starts crying and does not join him. She reveals that her husband and son died in a car crash fourteen months prior. Their emotional connection deepens their intimacy, and Jon experiences truly satisfying sex for the first time.
At
confession
A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of people – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information that ...
, Jon tells his priest he has stopped watching porn, and though he had premarital sex with Esther, it felt special and unlike his previous connectionshe is disillusioned when the priest does not acknowledge his substantial improvement. Jon finally tells his family about his breakup with Barbara. While his parents are upset, his sister Monica bluntly tells them that Barbara clearly only wanted to date someone she could control. Jon meets with Barbara and apologizes for lying to her, but asserts that her expectations were demanding of him and unattainable. She insists that a man should make any sacrifice for a woman he loves and tells Jon not to call her again.
As neither of them is interested in conventional love or marriage, Jon and Esther happily begin dating and "lose" themselves when being intimate.
Cast
Production
Development for ''Don Jon'' began in 2008, when Gordon-Levitt wrote early notes about the film.
Rian Johnson
Rian Craig Johnson (born December 17, 1973) is an American filmmaker. He made his directorial debut with the neo-noir mystery film ''Brick (film), Brick'' (2005), which received positive reviews and grossed nearly $4 million on a $450,000 budget ...
gave feedback during the writing process and reviewed several cuts of the film.
Christopher Nolan
Sir Christopher Edward Nolan (born 30 July 1970) is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Blockbuster (entertainment), blockbusters with complex storytelling, he is considered a leading filmma ...
cautioned against both directing and starring in the film due to the extra challenges it would bring.
Gordon-Levitt has credited his experience directing short films for
HitRecord for teaching him what he needed to know to make ''Don Jon'' and has said that he hopes to make films in a more collaborative way in the future.
Principal photography for ''Don Jon'' began in May 2012.
Rating
In the United States, the film was originally certified
NC-17, due to some explicit pornography that Jon watches. Gordon-Levitt decided to remove some of the more graphic scenes to qualify for an R rating because he felt the original rating would cause people to think the movie was about pornography.
Box office
''Don Jon'' grossed $24.5 million in North America and $16.5 million internationally, for a total worldwide gross of $41 million.
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
reports an approval rating of 80% based on 202 reviews, with a rating average of 6.8/10. The website's critical consensus states: "''Don Jon'' proves to be an amiable directing debut for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and a vivacious showcase for his co-star, Scarlett Johansson."
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
gives a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is an American market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts from the data.
Background
Ed Mintz, who ...
on its opening weekend gave ''Don Jon'' an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.
''Don Jon'' received very positive reviews at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023.
The festival has acted ...
. ''Entertainment Weekly'' managing editor Jess Cagle called the film "one of the best movies I saw at the fest" and wrote "Funny, touching, smart, and supremely confident, ''Don Jon'' is also Gordon-Levitt's feature directorial debut, and it establishes him as one of Hollywood's most exciting new directors."
William Goss of Film.com praised Gordon-Levitt for his "assured style" as both director and screenwriter. Edward Douglas of ComingSoon.net gave high praise to the screenplay. Consensus of the film when it was played at the Sundance Film Festival, as noted by Odie Henderson, was that ''Don Jon'' was a "more fun version" of the 2011 film ''
Shame
Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness.
Definition
Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...
''.
The supporting actresses Scarlett Johansson and Julianne Moore received praise for their performances.
Stephanie Zacharek of ''The Village Voice'' praised the film, writing:
Accolades
Home media
''Don Jon'' was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 31, 2013 (
New Year's Eve
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve refers to the evening, or commonly the entire day, of the last day of the year, 31 December, also known as Old Year's Day. In many countries, New Year's Eve is celebrated with dancing, eating, drinkin ...
).
By June 2014, over two million copies of the Blu-ray were sold.
References
External links
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{{Joseph Gordon-Levitt
2013 films
2013 directorial debut films
2013 independent films
2013 romantic comedy-drama films
2010s English-language films
2010s sex comedy-drama films
American independent films
American romantic comedy-drama films
American sex comedy-drama films
Films about pornography
Films about sexual addiction
Films based on the Don Juan legend
Films directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Films produced by Ram Bergman
Films scored by Nathan Johnson (musician)
Films set in a movie theatre
Films set in New Jersey
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films shot in New Jersey
Relativity Media films
Voltage Pictures films
Films about grief
2010s American films
English-language independent films
English-language romantic comedy-drama films
English-language sex comedy-drama films