Ricci brazen, gutsy in `Opposite of Sex’

“The Opposite of Sex.” Written and directed by Don Roos. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for strong language, sexuality and adult content). Showing nightly, Aug. 3-6, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

As Dedee Truitt, the tough-talking, booze-swilling, 16-year-old tramp in Don Roos’ “The Opposite of Sex,” Christina Ricci is devastating, tossing away her knickers in favor of 6-inch stiletto heels, a smart, gutsy career move that carries the former child star fully into adulthood — and into a future filled with the promise of smoking guns, bedroom brawls and lipstick-smeared kisses.

Taking her excellent performance in “The Ice Storm” to even greater, racier lengths, Ricci shocks in “Sex” with a sexuality that smolders in spite of her 18 years. Her world-weary Dedee is brazen and ballsy, a gun-toting femme fatale who wears her makeup like a bruise and who delights in dragging those around her down into an unforgettable pit of hell.

With her dishwater-blond hair and baby-fat body, she is more than simply the undisputed queen of trailer trash; indeed, she is Lolita with a bustline — and a sharply barbed tongue.

As Dedee herself puts it after slamming a chair on top of her recently deceased stepfather’s open grave, “If you think I’m just plucky and scrappy, and all I need is love, you’re in over your head. I don’t have a heart of gold and I won’t grow one later. OK?”

That’s fine, perfectly fine, Ms. Truitt, but, by all means, please bring on more of this tantalizing tantrum.

Happily, Dedee does. As the film opens, Dedee, who also narrates, is seen storming out of her mother’s house in a cloud of cigarette smoke that clears to find her in the arms of Randy (William Scott Lee), a Bible-thumping redneck from Louisiana who, unfortunately, was born with only one testicle, but who, miraculously, manages to get Dedee pregnant. Such is the power of God.

Escaping Randy, Dedee flees to Indiana, where she goes to her half brother Bill’s house for help, but ends up seducing Bill’s boyfriend, Matt (Ivan Sergei), instead. Bill (Martin Donovan) is the absolute antithesis of the rampantly homophobic Dedee — he is decent, level-headed, loving, a schoolteacher who has relationships that are healthy, something Dedee cannot comprehend.

But she can damage them — and does — in a film that amounts to post-modern comic art. With Lisa Kudrow as Bill’s spinster friend Lucia, Lyle Lovett as Officer Carl Tippett and Johnny Galecki as the meddling Jason, “The Opposite of Sex” surfaces as the most politically incorrect film of the year; still, with all its tongue-in-cheek bitterness, sarcasm and cynicism, it manages to never offend.

Ironically, the reason for this is Dedee herself, who, through her wicked ways, unwittingly helps each character to explore their sexuality — and discover what they really want is what Dedee herself calls the opposite of sex: lasting, committed and loving relationships.

Now go and have one of your own. Grade: A-

Video of the Week

“Dark City.” Directed by Alex Proyas. Written by Proyas, Lem Dobbs and Davis Goyer. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for violence and adult themes).

With strong, visual echoes of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” and, to a lesser degree, Victor Fleming’s “The Wizard of Oz,” “Dark City” is nevertheless director Alex Proyas’ own haunting vision, one that stuns with sharp, staccato editing, retro-futuristic set designs and fresh, hallucinatory images that can be jaw-dropping in their grandeur.

The film opens with its hero, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), awakening naked, confused and disoriented in a bathtub he doesn’t recognize as his own. The telephone rings. Startled, Murdoch answers it, and is quickly told by a breathless Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) to leave his apartment immediately — there are men coming to kill him.

Murdoch flees, and soon finds himself running for his life from a band of bald, gray-faced, alien Strangers, who are seeking the key to the human soul in an effort to prolong their own doomed race.

Their quest is at once frightening and thrilling, deadly and macabre. Murdoch, who gradually learns he has telekinetic powers that can alter shapes and give him the power of flight, pushes relentlessly toward truths that could be mistruths — and lies that may be at the cornerstone of a twisted reality.

In style, imagination and cinematography, “Dark City” is everything “The Fifth Element” wanted to be, but never pulled off. It is wonderful visual entertainment, and could be the most accurate rendering of a nightmare ever captured on film. See this. Grade: A-

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews films each Monday in the NEWS.