Die a Little Death
Sex and Death 101 Written & Directed by Daniel Waters
At last, Winona Ryder has a vehicle to restore her as the brooding mans sex symbol! Smartly partnering up once again with writer-director Daniel Waters (screenwriter of Heathers) for Sex and Death 101, Ryder makes the most of her deadpan, husky voice: the one that sounds as if shes dredging words from a subterranean cavern. Unfortunately, most of Sex and Death focuses not on Ryder as Death Nell, a femme fatale taking back the night by putting misogynist men in comas, but on Roderick Blank (Simon Baker), who is one of those annoyingly cocky suit-and-tie men with perfect hair. Mere weeks before his wedding, Roderick receives a mysterious email that lists the 101 women he will have had sex with by the end of his life. Unfortunately for his fiancée, the list doesnt end with her. And Roderick just cant resist bedding down the remaining 72 women listed, especially since number 30 is a centerfold model.
Writer/director Waters has crafted a darkly funny look at the pursuit of sex, but he undermines his fairy tale story (more Brothers Grimm than Disney) with a strange trio of omnipotent men who attempt to explain how the list was released. In a film about pre-destination, explanations only detract from the spectacle of watching a man struggle between fighting destiny and giving inand, in this case, getting laid. Sex and Death is far more potent and entertaining when its focused on the goofy sex, the heartache of unrequited love or the loneliness that not even constantly getting laid can eradicate. Baker, probably best known as the requisite cad in The Devil Wears Prada, handles his frequent sex scenes with aplomb: from the stripper who accidentally impales herself on his dick to the beyond-lesbian power couple Bambi and Thumper, who want to switch it up by driving a stick for a night. But Baker is also talented enough to invest what could have been another horndog character with a sense of wonder, now that this list has fallen into his lap; this makes his perpetual search for the next woman seem more normal than heartless.
Eventually disgusted with the knowledge of who the next woman in his bed will be, Roderick buries the list and falls in love with the quirky Miranda (an incandescent Leslie Bibb). Unfortunately, shes just not that into him. And there are still dozens of names to goincluding number 101, Death Nell herself.
But as good as Baker is, Ryder owns the film. Dressed in vintage clothes and tagging her crime scenes with pithy messages like, What men call breathing I call suffocating, shes the same realistically kooky actress who first burst onto the scene 20 years ago.
When Rodericks picaresque sexual adventures finally end, and he finds himself face-to-face with Death Nell in a café, the movie fulfills the promise made by pairing Waters and Ryder again. The scene is both wistfully melancholic and pitch-black in its humor, as Roderick and Nell bond over kale and cherry tomatoes. Baker and Ryder both manage, in that one scene, to remove any lingering traces of distaste we might have for characters who fuck and run or leave men indefinitely unconscious. Yet the problem with films about pre-destination is that either they own it, and the end is depressing, or everything miraculously resolves itself. Sex and Death 101 indulges in a little bit of both. But lets forgive Waters: After all, hes made it clear that whenever happiness crops up, it is fairly fleeting.