The characters in Don Roos' "The Opposite of Sex" never seem to know when to shut up, and that's their charm. They are compulsive commentators on their own lives, and again and again, the comments elicit explosive laughs.
When the firecracker dialogue subsides, the deliciously snide narration takes over, delivered (with a sneer we can hear) by Christina Ricci. Her character, Dedee Truitt, is a psycho bimbette with a bottomless fund of contempt for the gross stupidity -- especially in sexual matters -- of just about everybody she encounters. "Typically gay", Dedee groans, of the gleaming golden urn in which her half-brother's Bill (Martin Donovan) stores the ashes of his former lover.
Roos is a successful screenwriter ("Single White Female", "Boys on the Side") making his directorial debut. For a first-timer, his sure-footed craftsmanship is very smooth. This is a verbally bawdy movie, but visually, it's the soul of discretion -- nudity-free, even in scenes that seem to call for it. He offers lip service (pardon the expression) to sexiness, but Roos isn't a satiric sensualist like Pedro Almodovar; rather than reveling in naughtiness, he holds it at arm's length and squints at it quizzically, firing off bon mots. The focus is consistently on the mental and social side effects of sexuality, the impossibility of making sense of it and the unforeseen consequences of unleashing it.
Dedee is fleeing a hellish family situation when she ends up on Bill's doorstep, dribbling cigarette ashes on the potted plants. She zeroes in on her half-brother's housemate, the dim Adonis Matt Mateo (Ivan Sergei, making the most of every vacant stare), in part because the spectacle of a contented gay relationship drives her crazy. She sets out with brisk efficiency (and a skillfully deployed bikini) to seduce the handsome stupe.
Roos takes current assumptions about the fluidity of sexual orientation absolutely for granted and gleefully works changes on them.
It's been only a couple of years since Ricci headlined films such as "Casper" and "Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain." On evidence of this picture, and of her star turn last year as a barely pubescent temptress in "The Ice Storm", she will not be a TGIF icon anytime soon, not even as "Wednesday, the Teenage Ghoul". Ricci is an expert malevolent pouter, and the juxtaposition of her Cupie-doll face and her curve-a-minute physique is inherently unsettling.
But once she's served her initial plot function as a troublemaker, Dedee's role becomes peripheral. The focus shifts to the sensible people left behind to tidy up: Bill and his friend Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), a sharp-tongued colleague from his high school teaching job who has carried a hopeless torch for him for years.
Kudrow is a spectacularly crafty comedienne. Roos hands her many of the film's best lines, and, with preternatural timing, she nails every one. Kudrow can also floor us with nothing but a raised eyebrow or her tonal modulations when delivering a string of expletives. Her manipulation of dialogue is the comedic equivalent of scat singing. There's some amazing teamwork in her scenes with Donovan, who gives the movie a solid, subtle center.
Kudrow's lovelorn Lucia seems at first defined by an all-encompassing bitter disappointment. By the end, however, she has emerged as the movie's moral center, a pivotal presence in a film that often seems to relish cynicism for its own sake.
Probably only an openly gay moviemaker like Roos could get away with some of the elaborate slurs these characters (Dedee, mostly) thoughtlessly hurl at each other. His honed approach to dialogue, though a wizard wisecrack generator, begins to sound speechy when the characters have something serious to get across.
By roughing it up with eruptive anger, Donovan naturalizes a diatribe to the effect that gay men of his generation paved the way for the freedoms ungrateful young "grunge fairies" like Matt's snotty boy-toy Jason (Johnny Galecki) take for granted. But Lyle Lovett, who has to deliver the movie's other major philosophical pronouncement (sex is a form of "biological highlighting" designed to focus our attention on an individual), isn't able to cushion the blunt impact of the lines. In close-ups, Lovett does delightful tiny takes with only the squinchy muscles around his eyes; an infinitesimal facial twitch is often his sole response to tumultuous events.
The pervasively self-conscious tone of "The Opposite of Sex" is certainly no accident. Roos is a ironist through and through, and in Dedee Truitt, he supplies a narrator who knows she is one and snaps out comments on the craft of storytelling. When a previously cold-blooded but voluble character finally warms up, Dedee is appalled by her boudoir antics: "She turned out to be one of those talkers!"
Apparently, the habit of loquacity dies hard.
THE OPPOSITE OF SEX
Sony Pictures Classics
Director-screenwriter: Don Roos
Producers: David Kirkpatrick, Michael Besman
Executive producers: Jim Lotfi, Steve Danton
Director of photography: Hubert Taczanowski
Editor: David Codron
Music: Mason Daring
Production designer: Michael Clausen
Costume designer: Peter Mitchell
Color/stereo
Cast:
Dedee Truitt: Christina Ricci
Bill Truitt: Martin Donovan
Lucia: Lisa Kudrow
Carl Tippett: Lyle Lovett
Jason: Johnny Galecki
Matt Mateo: Ivan Sergei
Randy: William Scott Lee
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
When the firecracker dialogue subsides, the deliciously snide narration takes over, delivered (with a sneer we can hear) by Christina Ricci. Her character, Dedee Truitt, is a psycho bimbette with a bottomless fund of contempt for the gross stupidity -- especially in sexual matters -- of just about everybody she encounters. "Typically gay", Dedee groans, of the gleaming golden urn in which her half-brother's Bill (Martin Donovan) stores the ashes of his former lover.
Roos is a successful screenwriter ("Single White Female", "Boys on the Side") making his directorial debut. For a first-timer, his sure-footed craftsmanship is very smooth. This is a verbally bawdy movie, but visually, it's the soul of discretion -- nudity-free, even in scenes that seem to call for it. He offers lip service (pardon the expression) to sexiness, but Roos isn't a satiric sensualist like Pedro Almodovar; rather than reveling in naughtiness, he holds it at arm's length and squints at it quizzically, firing off bon mots. The focus is consistently on the mental and social side effects of sexuality, the impossibility of making sense of it and the unforeseen consequences of unleashing it.
Dedee is fleeing a hellish family situation when she ends up on Bill's doorstep, dribbling cigarette ashes on the potted plants. She zeroes in on her half-brother's housemate, the dim Adonis Matt Mateo (Ivan Sergei, making the most of every vacant stare), in part because the spectacle of a contented gay relationship drives her crazy. She sets out with brisk efficiency (and a skillfully deployed bikini) to seduce the handsome stupe.
Roos takes current assumptions about the fluidity of sexual orientation absolutely for granted and gleefully works changes on them.
It's been only a couple of years since Ricci headlined films such as "Casper" and "Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain." On evidence of this picture, and of her star turn last year as a barely pubescent temptress in "The Ice Storm", she will not be a TGIF icon anytime soon, not even as "Wednesday, the Teenage Ghoul". Ricci is an expert malevolent pouter, and the juxtaposition of her Cupie-doll face and her curve-a-minute physique is inherently unsettling.
But once she's served her initial plot function as a troublemaker, Dedee's role becomes peripheral. The focus shifts to the sensible people left behind to tidy up: Bill and his friend Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), a sharp-tongued colleague from his high school teaching job who has carried a hopeless torch for him for years.
Kudrow is a spectacularly crafty comedienne. Roos hands her many of the film's best lines, and, with preternatural timing, she nails every one. Kudrow can also floor us with nothing but a raised eyebrow or her tonal modulations when delivering a string of expletives. Her manipulation of dialogue is the comedic equivalent of scat singing. There's some amazing teamwork in her scenes with Donovan, who gives the movie a solid, subtle center.
Kudrow's lovelorn Lucia seems at first defined by an all-encompassing bitter disappointment. By the end, however, she has emerged as the movie's moral center, a pivotal presence in a film that often seems to relish cynicism for its own sake.
Probably only an openly gay moviemaker like Roos could get away with some of the elaborate slurs these characters (Dedee, mostly) thoughtlessly hurl at each other. His honed approach to dialogue, though a wizard wisecrack generator, begins to sound speechy when the characters have something serious to get across.
By roughing it up with eruptive anger, Donovan naturalizes a diatribe to the effect that gay men of his generation paved the way for the freedoms ungrateful young "grunge fairies" like Matt's snotty boy-toy Jason (Johnny Galecki) take for granted. But Lyle Lovett, who has to deliver the movie's other major philosophical pronouncement (sex is a form of "biological highlighting" designed to focus our attention on an individual), isn't able to cushion the blunt impact of the lines. In close-ups, Lovett does delightful tiny takes with only the squinchy muscles around his eyes; an infinitesimal facial twitch is often his sole response to tumultuous events.
The pervasively self-conscious tone of "The Opposite of Sex" is certainly no accident. Roos is a ironist through and through, and in Dedee Truitt, he supplies a narrator who knows she is one and snaps out comments on the craft of storytelling. When a previously cold-blooded but voluble character finally warms up, Dedee is appalled by her boudoir antics: "She turned out to be one of those talkers!"
Apparently, the habit of loquacity dies hard.
THE OPPOSITE OF SEX
Sony Pictures Classics
Director-screenwriter: Don Roos
Producers: David Kirkpatrick, Michael Besman
Executive producers: Jim Lotfi, Steve Danton
Director of photography: Hubert Taczanowski
Editor: David Codron
Music: Mason Daring
Production designer: Michael Clausen
Costume designer: Peter Mitchell
Color/stereo
Cast:
Dedee Truitt: Christina Ricci
Bill Truitt: Martin Donovan
Lucia: Lisa Kudrow
Carl Tippett: Lyle Lovett
Jason: Johnny Galecki
Matt Mateo: Ivan Sergei
Randy: William Scott Lee
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 5/21/1998
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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