Let's Talk About Sex Review
by Michael Dequina (michael_jordan AT geocities DOT com)September 8th, 1998
_Let's_Talk_About_Sex_ (R) no stars (out of ****)
Let's not. Troy Beyer's directorial debut (she also wrote and stars) offers plenty of the bawdy talk the title promises. But it's wrapped around a load of dreck. Advice columnist Jazz (Beyer) aspires to be a talk show hostess, and the candid woman-to-woman interviews she shoots for an audition tape send Jazz and her two roommates, Lena (Randi Ingerman) and Michelle (Paget Brewster), on that dreaded "journey of self-discovery" traveled in too many independent films. Jazz unlocks a secret trauma that keeps her from committing to her perfect man (Joseph C. Phillips); slutty Lena realizes she just wants to be loved; bitchy Michelle realizes that her coldness comes from fear.
And the audience, what does it discover about these characters? They're a bunch of crybabies. Make that just "babies," because the duct-challenged Beyer, Ingerman, and Brewster cannot muster a single tear between them, which is a glaring problem once the film settles into its almost laughably dissonant tone: raunchy interview segments alternating with soppy, melodramatic crying scenes that sent my eyes rolling. The film's hilariously overblown housework-as-grieving climax, complete with cleanser cans being thrown in frustration, has to be a cinema landmark of some sort. As for the film's purported insight into female sexuality (most of the interviews are done with real people, not actors), to me it seems that Beyer simply chose the most outrageous segments for inclusion in the film, rather than the most honest. Terrible writing, terrible acting, terrible direction--terrible film. (opens September 11)
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Michael Dequina
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