{"id":153,"date":"2007-07-14T10:57:06","date_gmt":"2007-07-14T17:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=153"},"modified":"2008-09-10T10:58:02","modified_gmt":"2008-09-10T17:58:02","slug":"the-opposite-of-sex-her-mouth-is-the-poison-and-her-heart-is-fools-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=153","title":{"rendered":"‘The Opposite of Sex’: Her Mouth Is the Poison and Her Heart Is Fool’s Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘The Opposite of Sex’: Her Mouth Is the Poison and Her Heart Is \t\t Fool’s Gold<\/strong>
\nThe New York Times on the Web: Current Film
\nBy Janet Maslin<\/p>\n

Christina Ricci has morphed enchantingly from wicked little Wednesday of \t\tthe “Addams Family” comedies into Lolita’s evil twin. Voluptuous and \t\tscheming in Don Roos’s gleefully acerbic comedy “The Opposite of Sex,” she \t\tplays a nasty little baggage named Dedee whose sexual chicanery and \t\tself-interest know no bounds. Neither does Roos’s barbed humor as he mocks \t\tpreconceptions about straight and gay lifestyles with total abandon, rude \t\tepithets and all. What redeem the film’s surface bitterness are sharp \t\tobservations, laceratingly funny dialogue and something Dedee claims to \t\tfind especially loathsome: a secret heart of gold.<\/p>\n

Dedee narrates this busily plotted, nicely unpredictable sex comedy with a \t\tsarcastic edge. (“If you think I’m just plucky and scrappy and all I need \t\tis love, you’re in over your head,” she tells the audience right off the \t\tbat.) Trying out little tricks on her listeners whenever she feels like it, \t\tshe explains how she left home in Louisiana to barge in on Bill (Martin \t\tDonovan), her level-headed half brother. Bill is the kind of schoolteacher \t\twho, when finding rude graffiti about himself on a bathroom wall, corrects \t\tits faulty grammar. Bill is also gay, and his happy, stable relationship \t\twith Matt (Ivan Sergei) gives Dedee her first chance to pounce.<\/p>\n

Stacked little Dedee doesn’t so much seduce Matt as plop down in a bathing \t\tsuit and bully him into giving heterosexuality a try. Soon she has gotten \t\tpregnant and run off with both Matt and a chunk of her half brother’s \t\tsavings, prompting an anti-Dedee backlash from the film’s colorful array \t\tof supporting characters. Funniest and most touching of these is Lisa \t\tKudrow’s Lucia, the sister of Bill’s previous lover, who died of AIDS. \t\t(Dedee insists on referring to him as “Tom the dead guy.”) Ms. Kudrow \t\tsustains her expert “Friends” timing in a role that’s a marked departure: \t\ta lonely, spinsterish schoolteacher who expresses her jealousy of others’ \t\thappiness in especially funny ways.<\/p>\n

“I never knew my father,” Dedee tells her, by way of explaining the \t\tliaison with Matt. “And you really think this is a good way to make up for \t\tit?” Lucia inquires. To Matt’s claims that he is now bisexual, Lucia \t\tsnaps: “Please, I went to a bar mitzvah once. That doesn’t make me Jewish.”<\/p>\n

Lucia and Bill, played with cool, quiet strength by Donovan, wind up \t\tjoining forces in pursuit of Dedee, whom Lucia calls “the human tabloid.” \t\tThey track her to another city and spy on her with yet another lover. \t\t“That can’t be good for the baby,” muses Lucia, peering through a window. \t\t“Not only that, she’s gonna smoke a cigarette after,” adds Bill. And what \t\tabout Matt, who by now is being cuckolded? (“He made his bed, he can lie \t\tin it.” “If there’s room.”)<\/p>\n

Well into this comedy of unspeakably bad manners (Dedee’s, anyway), the \t\twisecracks are outweighed by gratifyingly tenderhearted developments. \t\tRoos, making his directorial debut (after strong screenwriting credits \t\tincluding “Boys on the Side,” “Love Field” and “Single White Female”), \t\tguides his lonely, smart-talking characters into relationships none ever \t\tthought possible. This makes for a happy ending even if Dedee winds up \t\tthrowing something at the camera. And the film’s resolution gracefully \t\trepudiates all its poisonous talk, especially the stream of small-minded \t\tslurs about gay life that come from Dedee. Essentially generous, “The \t\tOpposite of Sex” winds up showing rotten little Dedee how little sense \t\tthere is in stereotypes, and how varied and surprising love can be.<\/p>\n

Also in “The Opposite of Sex” are Lyle Lovett as an accommodating local \t\tpoliceman and Johnny Galecki as a gay student who tries to blackmail Bill \t\tafter Matt vanishes. “For all I know, you killed him,” the boy insists. \t\t“For all you know,” Bill replies evenly, “I’m just getting started.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘The Opposite of Sex’: Her Mouth Is the Poison and Her Heart Is Fool’s Gold The New York Times on the Web: Current Film By Janet Maslin Christina Ricci has morphed enchantingly from wicked little Wednesday of the “Addams Family” comedies into Lolita’s evil twin. Voluptuous and scheming in Don Roos’s gleefully acerbic comedy “The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}