A lot of, perhaps most, so-called lesbians are actually bisexual. A lot of, perhaps most, women who claim to be straight are too. Fatima’s fiancé Jack; the vice president of a corporate firm; caught her in bed having sex with another woman. She claims it was her first time and that the reason she did it is because she “had to find-out” her sexual orientation, either unaware or unwilling to admit that the curiosity alone told her everything she needed to know. It’s not who you have sex with that determines your sexual orientation, in other words, it’s who you’re sexually attracted to.

When Fatima’s new girlfriend and several other “lesbian” women have sex with Jack, her now ex-fiancé, it’s strictly business. They want babies, women can’t give each other babies and sperm banks are too unreliable and it’s hard for women couples to adopt. That makes Jack the man of choice. After losing his job during a Watergate-like job scandal, he needs the money; ten-thousand dollars per woman, minus Fatima’s ten-percent finder’s fee. That’s the deal and the hook of the plot. The fact that Fatima still has heteromantic feelings for him is supposed to be beside the point.

If it all seems silly, that’s because it is. The overall tone of this Spike Lee “joint” is that of a serious drama, as the orchestral score so often suggests, but the lesbian baby bits come across as some sort of comical hyperbole. That might be fine if the movie were just about that, but it rocks back and forth between that and Jack’s unrelated job scandal, which lacks any real sense of suspense despite threatening to land him in prison for a long time. There’s even a big courtroom scene near the end. But the sex scenes, which at times cross over into softcore porn, are much more appealing.

my rating : 3 of 5

2004