It's hard not to like John Waters. Sure, his movies are vulgar, disgusting and borderline offensive, but he's funny. And he's refreshing, because there's no one else like him in Hollywood, or anywhere else.
Waters likes to put his toes just over the edge of the line, and once he's got you hooked, he disregards that line altogether. In his new movie, "A Dirty Shame," the line Waters so blatantly disregards is the one that encircles sex as an off-limits topic in our culture.
The movie, which got the dreaded NC-17 rating, reeks of sex, but not in the sleazy, stained back row of a porn house kind of way. The sex - or more the discussion and display of it, since there is no actual penetration in the film - is funny, good-natured and cheeky.
"A Dirty Shame" doesn't have much of a plot - the storyline involves a frumpy housewife, Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman), who lives in a sexless marriage with her boring husband Vaughn (Chris Isaak). She keeps their daughter, Caprice (Selma Blair), a stripper known as Ursula Udders who has breasts twice the size of her head, under house arrest. One day, on the way to work, Sylvia gets in a car accident and hits her head. A mechanic cutely named Ray-Ray (played to perfection by Johnny Knoxville) helps her with her head by, well, giving her head.
The premise in the world of this film is that when someone gets a head injury he or she instantly becomes a sex addict, resulting in a town (an uptight neighborhood of Baltimore, actually) full of sexual deviants and those who oppose them (called "neuters").
Sylvia, who was previously a neuter - along with her uptight mother Big Ethel - becomes sexually crazed after her accident. The catch to the head injury premise is that each victim gets a fetish related to how they initially hit their head, so Sylvia becomes obsessed with oral sex, or as she calls it, "going down to the dirty South."
After Ray-Ray informs her that she is the last of the 12 sexual apostles who will lead the sex addicts to find the ultimate, previously undiscovered sex act, Sylvia is introduced to the sexual world that lurks just behind the white picket fences and carefully trimmed hedges.
Among the fetished freaks are Fat Fuck Frank, a man obsessed with Caprice; Dingy Dave, a skinny kid who is turned on by dirt; Officer Alvin, a police officer who is an adult baby (yes, he dresses up like an actual baby because he finds it erotic); and the three bears, three hairy, woodsy men who like to cuddle. The fetishes (there are oh so many more than just these) are all strange, and sometimes the audience has to question "How exactly could that turn someone on?" But they are all presented in a completely non-judgmental manner.
Indeed, this film, which is absolutely over the top and outrageous, never judges. Instead, Waters pits the characters against each other, sexers versus neuters, and allows them to duke it out over whether too much sex on the streets is a bad thing. The slant is, of course, toward the sexers, but Waters also questions whether liberalism and tolerance can go too far. He certainly seems to be aiming to break down the social conventions that prohibit sex from being a topic of open discussion between most Americans, but Waters also seems to point out that some limits may be necessary or anarchy will ensue - which it does in the film.
"A Dirty Shame" is a crazy viewing experience. Sex is so prevalent in the film that viewers may leave unable to think about anything else for hours. But "A Dirty Shame" is not a porn film despite its NC-17 status, which is a little extreme. The sex acts presented in the film are campy and staged; there is nothing dirty or even erotic about them. But if you are easily offended, prude or fearful of exceedingly large breasts, this movie is not for you. If not, "A Dirty Shame" is sure to make you blow your wad.
