He's
a respectable architect, with a lucrative career and a stable family life.
And she's a sex starved psycho from hell! That's the most tasteful way
to paraphrase The Ex, starring Nick Mancuso and Yancy Butler, while still
being faithful to the spirit of the film. I rate it two out of four, but
you should understand that to really mean "two out of two:" no intelligent
person would watch this movie and actually expect more.
With
that caveat: Director Mark Lester knows how to make this direct-to-video
vehicle stand out from the rest, and putting Yancy Butler in front of the
camera gets him more than halfway there. She growls, she scratches, she
purrs. Some social critics might point out that she is just an effigy of
feminism and that, by presenting a woman who is independent and sexually
assertive as a monster, movies like this tend to demonize the liberated
woman. For one thing, these movies seem to suppose that sexuality is her
only competitive tool, and that when she uses it, she’s up to no good.
But to take these characterizations as some type of political lampoon worth
remarking upon bestows upon these films unnecessary and unmerited social
value. One must draw a line between the psycho babe fantasy and reality,
and take these movies how they were intended: as prurient interest flicks.
Film-makers
know that there is a B-market for sexual thrillers--that genre in which
movies like Fatal Attraction (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992) may be considered
"critically-acclaimed"--wherein attention to sordid detail and titillating
subject matter are acceptable substitutes for cinematic worth. The Ex has
plenty of the first. Butler prances around bra-less, having lesbian phone
sex. At one point, the femme fatale picks up a truck driver and gets him
to go rough. After she ditches him, she goes home and beats herself up
to make it look like her reformed wife-beater ex-husband (Mancuso) sexually
assaulted her. This is the fury, we are to think, of a woman scorned. Earlier,
when Mancuso first scorns her inappropriate advances, she finds another
way into his house--by befriending his wife (Suzy Amis) and winning over
their young son (Hamish Tildesley).
All
the while Butler terrorizes her ex-husband and his family, she seems to
be sticking out her tongue at him, as if tempting death is her greatest
sexual thrill. After she terrifies Mancuso by threatening to jump out of
a window, she grabs his crotch and teases him, "I bet you’re all hard."
Celluloid trash? You know it. But, for the "Jerry Springer" demographic
(and us who watch just out of intellectual curiosity--wink wink, nudge
nudge) it does not come more slickly packaged than The Ex.
