She showed no hint of it as Wednesday Addams. Nor was there any glimmer of what was to come from her role as the cherubic and mostly silent younger daughter of Cher in "Mermaids," when she garnered audience chuckles by trying to walk aroundthe house with a jack-o-lantern on her head. Despite this angelic start, however, there is no mistaking that actress Christina Ricci, in her development from child actress to young adult (and Ricci is undoubtedly a young adult), has become, quite simply, the opposite of the opposite of sex.
Ricci, in Don Roos' latest film and the writer's first directorial effort, "The Opposite of Sex," shows with the heavily made-up, scantily-clad, proudly voluptuous character of 16- year-old Dedee Truitt that she is no longer the adorable child who played opposite Cher but instead one to compete with the actress/singer in blatant sexual presence.
Ricci's blossoming sexuality, first glimpsed in "The Ice Storm" where it was displayed with a cool and calculating confidence that masked many scars of adolescence, has flowered, and Ricci moves into the realm of the vamp, tramp and femme fatale with "The Opposite of Sex." It is apparent that Ricci can play these roles well.
As the film's narrator, Dedee Truitt lets the audience know immediately that, "I do not have a heart of gold, and I do not grow one later." In fact, Dedee and her unchecked yet extremely conscious sexuality act as the catalyst for many of the disasters that comprise the film's plot. She is spunky and self-aware and, as she will let the viewer know, and as the film will prove, dangerous.
Dedee is a chain-smoking 16-year-old with the libido and body of a 20-something Hustler pin-up and the problems of a troubled adolescent. When she moves into the house of her homosexual half-brother, Will (played with a flat nice-guy stoicism by Martin Donovan) and his new young lover, she has little more on her mind than seducing the her brother's man. "You'd sleep with black people and not with me?" Dedee asks, developing her ignorant yet determined reasoning with, "That's reverse discrimination."
Somehow, it works, and Dedee and her brother's soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend become involved in an affair that will lead the characters halfway across the country in a strange, ridiculous scenario of running and chasing, loving and hating, murder, mayhem and, most importantly, sex. Unfortunately, the film attempts to follow everything in its first hour, leaving the viewer wondering who and what the film is about.
When the action does settle down with its characters, bringing them together at the end of a bizarre cross-country trek, then and only then do the central issues of "The Opposite of Sex" become clear. And with a wonderfully honest speech by Lisa Kudrow in the role of Lucia, the sister of Will's first love who fell victim to AIDS, the viewer is moved from the realm of passive spectator and finally let into the characters' lives. Each, it can be seen, has no idea what to make of sex and love and the role of each in relationships, and the film represents their fumbling attempts at understanding.
"The Opposite of Sex" thus ends wonderfully. It presents a universal issue in a touching, yet darkly humorous manner, and even allows itself to be liked, something that Dedee vehemently protests in her opening narration. However, Roos takes his time in revealing the point of the film, and the self-conscious style of the film's narration creates a distance that, although comic, makes it hard for sympathies to develop.
Roos sets a difficult task for himself in creating the wonderfully dislikable Dedee, and he succeeds only moderately in making a likable film about her. "The Opposite of Sex" is a marvelously witty film when it centers on its attempt to define sex and love and their inextricable, anything but anonymous, relationship to each other. Unfortunately, like its characters, it frequently gets lost along the way.
