For nine years, Vermont-based filmmaker Liz Canner raced around the country with her camera doing research and interviews for this exemplary, absorbing, muckraking documentary. And she accomplished her objective: to show how the American pharmaceutical industry, in legion with famous doctors in its pay, has identified a disease, "female sexual dysfunction" (FSD), that they claim (dubiously) afflicts 43 percent of American women. At the same time, these companies have been developing a cure-all pill or ointment or patch, "a pink Viagra," that promises to be very profitable. Canner seems to be at every key meeting, and she talks to every key figure in the FSD debate, from smooth drug-industry spokespeople to articulate feminist academicians. But the person in the film who makes the most sense is, in terms of formal degrees, the least qualified: Kim Airs, the personable ex-owner of Grand Opening, the women's sex shop in Coolidge Corner.
