BY PROF. EDWIN JAHIEL
THE OPPOSITE OF SEX ** 2/3 .Written and directed by Don Roos. Photography, Hubert Taczanowski. Editing, David Codron. Production design, Michael Clausen. Costumes, Peter Mitchell. Music, Mason Daring. Producers, David Kirkpatrick, Michael Besman. Executive producers, Jim Lotti, Steve Danton, Cast: Christina Ricci (Dedee Truitt), Martin Donovan (Bill Truitt), Lisa Kudrow (Lucia), Lyle Lovett (Carl Tippett), Johnny Galecki (Jason), Ivan Sergei (Matt Mateo), William Scott Lee (Randy). A Sony Classics release. 100 minutes. Rated R. At the Art theater.
A quick poll about what the opposite of sex is produced the following replies: "That's a dumb question" (3); "Excessive food" (1); " A PG rating (1); "Running out of Viagra" (1); "No sex" (10), "Celibacy" (1).
The film opens with a small bang. Dedee's stepfather is being buried. He may or may not have abused her as she later declares, but then Dedee has a lot of imagination. A teen nymphette-rebel-with-probable-cause, she paces around the graveside, smoking, and practically kicking the coffin into the hole. This must mean that she didn't like the man. She clearly does not like her life, her mother and perhaps herself. A troubled girl.
Post-burial she runs away --to what looks like a small Indiana town but is a suburb of South Bend--, to stay with her long-time-no-see much older half-brother Bill. He is a dedicated schoolteacher and seems to be a nice sort. His lover Tom had died of AIDS and left Bill plenty of money and an upscale house. He also seems to have inherited the late Tom's sister Lucia. Rather nervous, insecure, sexually repressed, and apparently Bill's best friend, she's a protector of sorts who hovers around the man. Bill's current lover is a handsome, likable, twenty-something Mattt. Neither man evinces any gay mannerisms.
Dedee is 16, going at the same time on 30 and on 12. Like the combination brat, tramp and "agent provocateur" that she is, she sets out to take out her dysfunctionality on the Indiana Three. She thinks highly of herself as a philosopher-sociologist-shrink, and talks a lot, a big lot. In spasmodic ways, she also narrates the film. It's an old device but used here with much originality. Dedee comments to the audience about everything, acts like the eye of God, like someone who has already seen the finished movie The Opposite Sex, can tell us about it and about herself, pass judgments, tell us what we are expecting but won't get, tell us what she's going to tell us.
Dedee is a very fast talker. Her language is foul and trashy. She seems to be savoring all her filthy words, rolling them around her mouth and putting them in capitals. That kid is a mix of precocious wisdom and infantilism, lies and truths, skepticism and cynicism, particles of sophistication and big chunks of false sophistication.
She can be, and mostly is, unbearably irritating, but then that's part of the script's strategy. Her foul language would disqualify her from being a snake oil saleswoman, but she gets other kinds of results. The first major thing she does in Indiana is to come on blatantly to Matt, verbally and physically (but the audience is shown no nudity). In a flash she convinces Matt that he is, or can be a heterosexual, that in his affair with Bill "you are basically [verb deleted] your father." She seduces him pronto. The new couple takes off for California, and takes along ten thousand dollars stolen from Bill as well as the precious urn in which he kept Tom's ashes. Her seduction agenda. we learn later, is caused by Dedee's being pregnant by, most likely, one of her Louisiana lovers, teen-ager Randy, famous for having only one testicle.
This is just the beginning. If you want to pigeonhole the movie, is a sort of black comedy/farce. Outrageous complications follow in all directions, include flashbacks, home movies, everything and everybody.
There's local sheriff Carl played by the bizarre, improbable Lyle Lovett. He is a widower and sweet on Lucia. When the latter reproaches him "Your wife was dying and you [verb deleted] her nurse," Carl missing no beat replies "If Nancy didn't mind..." Bill gets blackmailed, then falsely defamed by his former student Jason. The town is most receptive to anti-gay feelings. and a scandal follows in the local media.
Bill and Lucia set out after Dedee-Matt who become Dedee-Randy when the latter materializes from the sticks of Louisiana. Carl follows Bill and Lucia. Add to this fights, guns firing, a motorcycle purchase, other madnesses and non sequiturs. Add to that an incredible trip to Canada as, by car, somehow (but how?) A follows B who follows C who has gone there with D, and where E magically pops up, and where the entire cast is reunited in a cabin in the woods!
The script overdoes its wish to be topical, current and trendy. Trying too hard to be original, it overloads the plot, overkills its gimmicks, characters, absurdism. Admittedly, there are moments of comedy and farce, but too many of them get drowned in much humor that thinks it is humor but is not. Instead of Marx Brothers crazy-funny absurdism, we get crazy-showy, uncensored absurdism, at full throttle. The would-be avant-garde continuity, including time and space, is a mess.
Is the film worth seeing? Yes, for specialized audiences that are into the off-beat. It 's an experiment whose originality is interesting, even if it is too smug, self-conscious, frenetic and patchy. Screenwriter and now first-time director Don Roos must know the tricks of Pirandello, Brecht and the French New Wave, but has gone overboard. And we still don't know what the opposite of sex is.
" Le mauvais gout mene au crime" (Stendhal)
Edwin Jahiel's movie reviews are at http://www.prairienet.org/ejahiel
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