Woman on Top.Woman on Top * Written by Vera Blasi * Directed by Fina Torres * Starring Penelope Penelope (pənĕl`əpē), in Greek mythology, wife of Odysseus and the mother of Telemachus. In Homer's Odyssey she is pictured as a chaste and faithful wife. When Odysseus was away, she was surrounded by suitors who tried to persuade her that he would never return. Cruz, Harold Perrineau Jr., and Murilo Benicio * Fox Searchlight In the world according to romantic comedy, society is divided into the slaves of love and the slaves of lovers. The former are invariably gorgeous and well dressed, aesthetic advantages that compensate for the fact that they are either a little potty or a lot boring. The latter are never dull, because they have refined the art of irony to compensate for the poetic fascism that dictates they can never be as lovely or nattily attired as the lovers they serve. Such rules also command that the slaves of lovers never fall in love themselves or do anything that would otherwise upstage the amorous aspirations of their mistresses and masters. In the old comedies of Plautus Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus) (plô`təs), c.254–184 B.C., Roman writer of comedies, b. Umbria. His plays, adapted from those of Greek New Comedy, are popular and vigorous representations of middle-class and lower-class life. and Shakespeare, these people were, quite literally, slaves. In the farces of Doris Doris, small mountainous district, central Greece, inland between the Gulf of Corinth and the Malian Gulf. It was the traditional homeland of the Dorians, who may, in fact, have paused there during their invasion of Greece. Sparta gave Doris military aid during the 5th cent. B.C. Day and Rock Hudson, they were Thelma Ritter and Tony Randall. In the post-Doris entertainments of today, they are queer. The homo-ization of romantic comedy alters the rules to the extent that the new transgender slaves of lovers are now entitled, if not expected, to be fabulously costumed. They also might have romantic rewards in store for themselves. Such is the case with Harold Perrineau Jr., who plays a San Francisco transvestite with a penchant for tall, blinding head-dresses in Fina Torres's Woman on Top. (Perrineau has never done much for me in trouser roles, but he makes a wonderful drag queen; being a woman seems to bring out the man in him). As Monica Jones, Perrineau lives to gratify the needs of the bewitching Penelope Cruz (Almodovar's pregnant nun in All About My Mother). Cruz's character, Isabella Isabella, 1296–1358, queen consort of Edward II of England, daughter of Philip IV of France. She married Edward in 1308. Neglected and mistreated by her husband, Isabella nourished hatred for the royal favorites, the Despensers (see Despenser, Hugh le), who were responsible (1324) for the confiscation of her estates. In 1325 she was sent to France to negotiate with her brother Charles IV over Gascony., has blown into town from Bahia, Brazil, after having been jilted by her husband, Toninho (the comparably breathtaking Murilo Benicio). How beautiful is Isabella? When she walks down the street, flaccid 1. weak, lax, and soft. 2. atonic. flac·cid (fl  s s d, fl tulips regain their erections and parades of guys swell behind her. You would never guess there were so many straight men in San Francisco, let alone so few lesbians. Indeed, Monica shoulders the dual responsibility of representing the entire queer population of the Bay Area and most of its African-Americans as well. One must keep reminding oneself that writer Vera Blasi is from Brazil, a land where a disproportionate number of blacks keep house for the lighter-skinned upper class and where drag queens come out once a year like Carnaval Santa Clauses. Both Isabella and her cheating Toninho are portrayed as victims of such rigid social stratification. The film's joke is that Isabella suffers from motion sickness motion sickness, waves of nausea and vomiting experienced by some people, resulting from the sudden changes in movement of a vehicle. The ailment is also known as seasickness, car sickness, train sickness, airsickness, and swing sickness. The principal cause of the disturbance is the effect of motion on the semicircular canals of the inner ear, although other factors such as inadequate ventilation and fumes or noxious odors may contribute. that she can only keep at bay by controlling her motion. So she must commandeer the wheel of taxicabs that pick her up, and she must be a top sexually, a division of labor that takes an emasculating toll on Toninho. Woman on Top is a comedy of liberation in which its two slaves of love grow into new roles. As post-Doris comedies go, it bears a suspicious resemblance to Day's The Thrill of It All: Instead of turning into a TV-commercial queen, Cruz becomes a TV cooking-show host, with Monica as her rouged-up Ed McMahon. Torres directs it all with the requisite Doris Day sparkle and fizz, plus a heady dose of samba and scenery. It's such a breezy Brazilian cocktail, you hate to balk when the producers move to drop Monica from Isabella's show when it goes national because they think Middle America is not ready for a TV on TV. Exactly who do they think tunes in to cooking shows anyway? Find more on Woman on Top and links to related Internet sites at www.advocate.com Stuart is film critic and senior film writer at Newsday. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion