GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

JULY 3, 1998

Evenings Out

A biting satire of American sexual mores

The Opposite of Sex

Written and directed by Don Roos Sony Pictures Classics

Reviewed by Doreen Cudnik

As the morbidly mischievous daughter Wednesday Addams in the Addams Family films, actress Christina Ricci gave us a glimpse at her penchant for portraying darkly comic characters that deviate greatly from the roles most actresses her age (she's 18). would even consider touching.

Ricci is true to form in the just-released film The Opposite of Sex, in which she stars as Dedee, a 16-year-old white trash trollop that makes trouble for anyone who gets in her way.

After making a huge scene at her stepfather's funeral, Dedee wreaks havoc on her gay brother Bill's calm and ordered life when she runs away from her mother in Louisiana and shows up at his well-appointed Indiana home.

She decides to make her way to Indiana, she tells us while narrating the film, because "gays have really nice houses" and because "Tom the dead one was really loaded." Tom, we learn, was Bill's lover who died of AIDS and left him with a substantial amount of money. Tom's money allows Bill to live well beyond his salary as an English teacher.

Unlike the Indiana English teacher in last year's film In and Out, Bill is comfortable as a gay man. He's the type of guy that, upon catching a student writing anti-gay comments about him on the bathroom wall, has

BOB AKESTER

Jason's threat to claim molestation sends Bill (left) on a search for his sister, and the money and boyfriend she took from him.

the kid correct the sentence structure. Actor Martin Donovan describes his character as "a decent guy; morally and ethically he's very right down the middle, very straight. He's the gay straight man."

Bill has a much younger live-in boyfriend Matt (Ivan Sergei). He's tan, buff and beautiful, but also dumb as a rock. When Dedee decides to seduce Matt, just because she can, and since "he didn't look like a fairy at all," Matt succumbs fairly easily. He can't even come up with a decent answer to the old "How do you know if you haven't tried it?" question.

In no time, Dedee has the simple-minded Matt playing right into her hand. Shortly after beginning their trysts, Dedee informs

Matt that she's pregnant, and he's the daddy. A do-the-right-thing type of guy, Matt decides they have to tell Bill and they should get married.

Bill takes the news calmly at first, unlike his sexually repressed best friend, his late lover's sister Lucia (played by Friends cast member Lisa Kudrow). Frustrated by Matt's sudden "change" of sexual orientation, Lucia fumes, "Please, I went to a bar mitzvah once, that doesn't make me Jewish!"

The manipulative Dedee persuades Matt to steal $10,000 of Bill's money, and takes Tom's ashes as "insurance," threatening to dump them if Lucia and Bill try to follow them.

As if things weren't bad enough, a former

Deedee sizes up Bill's boyırlend Márt at the poolside, and figures out how she will seduce him.

BOB AKESTER

student (played by Johnny Galecki of Roseanne fame) shows up at Bill's house claiming to also be Matt's lover. He informs Bill that he will tell everyone in town that Bill sexually molested him while he was a student unless Bill finds Matt and has him call.

When the former student makes good on his threat, scandal erupts in the conservative Indiana town and Bill and Lucia have no choice but to attempt to find Matt and Dedee in order to clear Bill's name.

The chase takes them to Los Angeles and across the border into Canada. Lyle Lovett delivers a fine performance here as Sheriff Carl Tippet; a friend of Bill's who finds himself romantically interested in the spinsterish Lucia.

The twists and turns in the plot are too many to mention. The film is quick, very funny, and the dialogue stays smart and edgy throughout every scene.

When all is said and done, every character discovers that what they really want is what Dedee cynically calls the opposite of sex-lasting, committed and loving relationships.

Thus the film's title, said writer and director Don Roos, who said his main character Dedee "desires a life of complete freedom with no consequences for her actions or connections, including relationships, friendships and babies. The film is all about sex and the connections it makes in our lives, as well as the consequences of having sex with somebody-good or bad."

Kudrow had yet another take on the title. "Sex is usually about the union between two people, but in this movie sex is dispersing everybody and driving them apart and making sure they are alone, which is the opposite of sex," she said.

But it is Donovan who sums up the true essence of the film. "It's a really biting satire on America's ignorance," he said. "There is a fear of sex and religion--the whole puritanical Calvinistic sexual mish-mash that is '90s America."

The Opposite of Sex opens in Cleveland at the Cedar-Lee Theater, 2163 Lee Rd., on Friday, July 3. It opens in Columbus one week later at the Drexel Theater, 2254 East Main Street.