photo courtesy of PhD Productions

Losing Control (opening tomorrow, March 23rd, at the Quad Cinema in NYC) is a romantic comedy about a female scientist who decides she wants scientific proof that her boyfriend is the One. Oh yeah, and her science lab day job involves studying an obscene amount of semen. But this is not semen-as-hair-gel slapstick stuff (although there is one tantric-propelled semen gag) —  the science in this movie is actually pretty legit, because writer-director-producer Valerie Weiss happens to have a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard Med School (She was also Em’s classmate at Princeton). Weiss founded the Dudley Film Program at Harvard, and while writing her dissertation, she directed her first film. Two weeks after wrapping production, she defended her Ph.D. thesis — and she hasn’t done another experiment since.

Losing Control explores the idea that there’s a “right” and a “wrong” way to find love, Weiss says. The protagonist (played by Miranda Kent) is a graduate student at — yes — Harvard, who attempts to apply scientific principles to her love life. If a good scientist repeats her experiments over and over until she’s really sure she’s covered all eventualities — does that mean a good citizen needs to sleep with strangers over and over until she’s sure she’s found the one? Kathleen Robertson (she played Clare, Steve’s girlfriend, in the original, only-one-that-really-counts 90210) is hilarious as her best friend. As is our old friend Ben Weber as her lab assistant (he played Skipper on Sex & the City). Click here to watch the trailer.

Read the rest of this post — an interview with filmmaker Weiss — at SUNfiltered