I LOVE YOU...DON'T TOUCH ME
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Goldwyn Entertainment/Westie Films Director: Julie Davis Writer: Julie Davis Cast: Maria Schaffel, Mitchell Whitfield, Meredith Scott Lynn, Michael Harris, Darryl Theirse, Nancy Sorel
When one of the characters in this vibrant, fast-moving, romantic comedy conveys the view, "We are animals; you'd better accept that," he utters a biologically provable fact. Julie Davis, who wrote, produced and edited the film at the age of twenty-seven underscores the word "we." Before women embraced the birth control pill some decades back, it was the male of the species which heeded this reality: females, the only gender which can become pregnant, were expected to ward off the particularly amorous embraces of their boy friends until marriage.
The culture of the 1990's in America is remarkably and thankfully different from the mores of the fifties. Women embrace sex with the same eagerness as their male companions, one of their the significant strides toward equality. Some women hold out, seemingly trapped in a 1950's time warp, but if their own best friends and female confidants no longer support their virginal convictions, the maidens can be mighty lonely, not to say horny. "I Love You...Don't Touch Me" exploits the possibilities of this theme in a movie which, however sitcomish, does indeed work to generate laughs and whose pace and dizzying array of characters come at us, so to speak, so briskly that we haven't time to concern ourselves about their superficiality. What is exceptional about this autobiographical picture is that it was made for just $64,000, yet retains a glossy, commercial look and features performers well known to the TV audience who waived compensation while strutting their stuff. "I Love You...Don't Touch Me" is targeted to a 20-something audience of single women, a constituency that has been left behind by equally funny sitcoms like "The Brothers McMullen," which tell their tales from the male point of view.
Katie (Marla Schaffel), who is at the center of this feathery comedy, is a women with a talent for singing who has been as unable to break into the music field as she has been helpless to surrender her 25-year-old virginity. She has a boy friend, Ben (Mitchell Whitfield), who loves her enough to obsess about her to his psychotherapist (Sara Van Horn), but Katie feels no physical attraction in return. Nor does Katie think of the male market as offering anything but trolls, perverts and liars, a viewpoint which affects her career. "You understand the music," explains her voice coach, "But you don't feel it." When her friend Elizabeth (Nancy Sorel) announces her engagement, Katie moans, "Now my mother will give me more s..." and when her promiscuous friend Janet (Meredith Scott Lynn)--described as "Barbra Streisand on speed"--expresses contempt for Katie's sexual innocence, Katie feels isolated. When a celebrated musician comes into her life, the 47-year-old Richard Webber (Michael Harris), Katie finally falls head over heels (literally), a shock which causes her to reconsider her priorities.
Marla Schaffel rewards us with her fine singing voice and a talent for finding the humor in her conflicted character. A woman whose mind wants stability but whose body craves sex, her Katie realizes that it's no fun to stay in an ivory tower of celibacy--that you have to kiss many frogs before you can embrace your prince, and she is able supported by Meredith Scott Lynn as her rollicking opposite, Mitchell Whitfield as her good-guy friend and Darryl Theirse as her orgy-loving next- door neighbor. The film boasts a lively sound track with songs like "Goin' Nowhere" and "There Will Never Be Another You" among its twenty-three hits.
In her debut as a writer-director, Julie Davis scores big with the one-liners, offering her audience at Sundance and, now, to a larger constituency of primarily young, single, a voice they will appreciate. Though the audience will be ahead of her characters, able to foresee the conclusion five or ten minutes into the story, the chief virtue of the project is the recognizability of the characters, however predictable. Some have already compared Ms. Davis to early Woody Allen, but it would be safer to compare her to a budding Neil Simon, when that playwright was more interested in a succession of quips (as in his 1961 "Come Blow Your Horn") than in the shaping of a solid story (as in his 1984 "Biloxi Blues"). With the steadfastness that Ms. Davis, a Dartmouth College graduate, appears to have, we will conceivably not have to wait as long for works which are equally funny while flirting with greater complexity. Rated R. Running time: 95 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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