The Opposite of Sex Review
by James Brundage (brundage AT alltel DOT net)January 15th, 1999
The Opposite of Sex (1998, R)
Written and Directed by Don Roos (Single White Female)
Starring Cristiana Ricci (The Adams Family), Martin Donovan (The Portrait of a Lady), Lisa Kudrow (Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion), Lyle Lovett (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Ivan Sergei (John Woo's Once a Thief)
As reviewed by James Brundage
Deedee Truitt (Ricci) is a narcissist. She's a sex-addicted, nyphomanical user and abuser. She's blaring, she offensive, she's witty, she's brilliant. She packs a gun while pregnant and swears every other word. And, like all anti-heroes, you love her by the end of the movie.
She's not going to grow a heart of gold (or so she says) and she's not going to change her ways. She goes around stealing ashes from urns, seducing gay men, running off with one-balled hicks from Louisiana, and basically living her life without consequences. Then, of course, she gets pregnant and reality begins to set in quickly.
Basically, her realization of reality comes around basically like this:
1) Stepfather dies. She leaves Louisiana with Randy, the one-balled hick, and keeps on running to Illinois, where she holes up with her homosexual half-brother and his lover, Matt. Matt and the half-brother are locked in a relationship based upon sex, which Matt readily admits but the half brother will not (his previous boyfriend died of AIDS).
2) Deedee seduces Matt. In a crazy world where anything can happen, anything does, with her working her unique charms to bed a homosexual.
3) Deedee gets pregnant. She splits.
What follows is a politically incorrect story of her learning that life isn't so easy. It's a wake up call: a rude one. The movie, for liberals like me, is both riotously funny and blatantly offensive. But in the strange world of film it was just the dark comedy I was looking for.
It offers an insight that no politically correct movie can. It doesn't worry about what you think about her, or what you think about it. This, as anyone who reads my reviews knows, constitutes my very favorite thing: ARTISTIC BOLDNESS.
Yes. A movie this flagrantly offensive is not only art but quite intelligent art at that. Instead of worrying, like everyone else does, about wording their answers to the questions of life in a kind way, The Opposite of Sex doesn't care.
The strange thing is, by the end of the movie, you will.
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