Look up "manipulative bitch" in the dictionary, and there'll be a picture of Dedee Truitt, Christina Ricci's character. A cherubic-looking piece of jailbait, she's pure-dee evil, with a fabulously sharp tongue. She narrates the movie with ironic, contemptuous commentary (which director Don Roos sneakily takes advantage of to allow himself to use movie cliches like swelling, sentimental music, while simultaneously puncturing them with a snarky comment from Dedee).
As the movie opens, Dedee flees her trailer-park home life to go live with her gay half-brother Bill (soulful Martin Donovan). In short order, she's seduced his hunky-but-dim lover, Matt (hot-hot-hot Ivan Sergei) and vanished with him and a chunk of Bill's money, inherited from his dead lover, Tom, whose sister, Lucia (Lisa Kudrow)... okay, it's just easier to see the movie.
The dialogue is crackerjack, and so's the acting. Kudrow and Donovan are the real center of the movie, and they're both terrific. Kudrow has finally broken out of the ditzy "Friends" role to display great wit as the lonely, bitter Lucia, shooting out lines like, "This is why I hate people!" and my personal favorite, "I have a death wish, too -- I just direct it toward other people." Bill, too, is lonely and heart-achingly sad after his lover's death, but he deals with it by detaching himself from life, resignedly accepting any adversity that comes his way. Donovan is great in this role -- previously I'd only seen him in Hal Hartley movies, and it's hard to make an impression in a Hal Hartley movie. (Oh, and I have to mention that Lyle Lovett is in the movie, too -- he's not a very good actor, but he is just so damn cool.)
Despite its efforts to avoid mush and message, the movie, in the end, is about love, and sex, and family, but it doesn't become disgustingly sappy or anything. Dedee ends up being as confused about love and sex as much as the rest of us (okay, me) are -- wanting the connection that sex brings, but not sure if it's worth the risk -- of disease, of pregnancy, of love. A movie that starts off being about clever lines and the perverse pleasure of watching someone truly evil turns out to give you something to think about. Even the soft-hearted among you should see this movie (the rest of you MUST see it).
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