Naughty romantic comedy (punish it if you please) about a self-mutilator since seventh grade, fresh out of the mental institution, who finds employment and a perfect match with a lone-wolf lawyer and closet spanker. It gives away its destination, or at least part of its itinerary, right at the outset, in a graceful ballet of secretarial services performed while cuffed to a crucifixion-like yoke (stapler operated by chin, etc.), and then it jumps back to six months earlier, taking its sweet time to return to the starting point (and beyond). The gradualness of development is one of the keys to the strategy, making sure that this feels like the unrehearsed mating dance of two autonomous oddballs, instead of the free-rein wish fulfillment of an S&M fantasist. (Although far from a pivotal peg, the concept of Sexual Harassment In The Workplace crops up parenthetically in a casual conversation among minor players, just to show that filmmaker Steven Shainberg has a certain familiarity with contemporary society and has not been secluded in some unapproachable chateau out of The 120 Days of Sodom.) The potential offensiveness is deflected by two main devices. First, the utter and total individuality of Maggie (sister of Jake) Gyllenhaal, discouraging generalization. Not so much the individuality of her case-file character (prettier sister, alcoholic father, overprotective mother, and so forth, though Shainberg is no more interested in "psychology" than was Luis Buñuel, a filmmaker who is brought to mind at numerous points), but simply the individuality of her look and manner: faintly moon-faced, buck-toothed, pig-snouted, with a twinkly Lillian Gish-y girlishness and a galumphing tomboy gait. (James Spader, more conventionally "attractive," feels obliged to signal his oddity more openly and incessantly.) Second, the absurdist, semi-surrealist exaggeration, coupled with the isolated, unpeopled, quasi-laboratory setting, discouraging us from taking the thing literally. But how, then, may it be taken figuratively and without offense? Well: how about as a metaphor of the miracle of love, the finding of the right fit, the happy discovery that what's wrong with you is all right with somebody else? Even then, however, the lightness of tone, the virtual giggliness of tone, might be felt to weaken not only the potential offensiveness but also the potential power. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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