Parker Posey has been looking for a way to show her stuff since her first hit “Party Girl.” She has had good exposure in minor roles in the Christopher Guest flicks but for some reason another major lead role has eluded her.
Intentional or not, this situation seems to have played into the hands of breakthrough director Billy Kent and co-writers Sarah Bird and Adam Wierzbianski in producing this excellent piece of very indie work about a woman who has, well, a problem.
Kent’s feature directorial debut, “The Oh in Ohio,“ showcases Parker Posie as Priscilla, a middle level executive in a Cleveland public relations firm who has never had an orgasm. This seems to go hand-in-hand with her work where the professionals around her all seem to never have had an orgasm, either.
But the difference is that she really wants to have one, and can’t. Whereas they have had a few and lost interest.
When she divulges this secret to her significant other, Jack (Paul Rudd), the result is co-habitational dysfunction that makes the recently released ‘The Break Up’ look like a dispute over socks on the floor (which it is).
Jack promptly takes up with seething high school handful Kristen (Mischa Barton) in a lame attempt to regain his manhood from his self-imposed guilt feelings.
Priscilla’s secretary Sherri (Miranda Bailey) joins the fray as her confident and sexual coach who opens the door to a whole new world of electro-mechanical lovemaking.
Woody Allen’s orgasmatron has come back to life but living better with electricity turns out to have unexpected consequences.
Thank goodness for Danny DeVito in the role of Wayne the Pool Guy, a widower who himself has not had sex since his wife died years before.
Is Wayne an unlikely candidate to unfreeze the heart and other areas of the forlorn Priscilla? Will Jack figure out if the age of consent is 16 or 18 in his affair with his student Kristen?
But this is getting ahead of the story. The fact is that this film is a genuinely fresh and new approach to the worn out romantic comedy.
OK, the subject matter will be too much for some. But for those who appreciate the dry humor of, for example, Guest (or even the master, Allen) and are not turned off by the intimate nature of the subject matter, it is a gem.
It is a romantic comedy only there is no one single romance. In fact, the majority of the film is spent on Priscilla learning to love herself.
If Posey was waiting for her chance to star, she has it now. The part allows her to portray that combination of outright boisterous sex appeal combined with the quivering lips of vulnerability and naive conservatism.
She plays the part of the conservative female professional like a pin ball machine, consistently under-acting the jokes as she lays waste to conventional social mores and the ruling machismo.
Liza Minnelli is on hand to play Alyssa Donahue the female masturbation class instructor. She almost comes out with the classic line from “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “Get to know your vagina!” But not quite.
All things considered, the film gets along well enough without it.
Miranda Bailey, playing the part of secretary and confident Sherri, is also founder of Ambush entertainment and a producer of this film along with the indie success ‘The Squid and the Whale,’ another probe into male-female-family dynamics.
Fun stuff all around for those who don’t mind frank subject matter.
Opens July 14, 2006 MPAA: Unrated
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