Love and Human Remains is based on an off-Broadway play by Canadian Brad Fraser. This film focuses on the sexual affairs of David (Thomas Gibson), a promiscuous waiter who lives with his ex-wife Candy (Ruth Marshall), a part-time book reviewer.
While he pursues various men including a 17-year-old busboy, she dates a bartender and has a brief encounter with a lesbian schoolteacher she meets at a health club. Other members of their circle of acquaintances include a drug dealer, a psychic dominatrix, and an angry yuppie.
In his first English language film, director Denys Arcand (Jesus of Montreal, The Decline of the American Empire) zeroes in on the cynicism and soullessness of these urban characters who desperately try to fill their empty lives with anonymous sex, television, video games, discos, and drugs. The only thing that keeps them going is friendship — which takes on a sacramental meaning for these twentysomethings.