I Love You, Don't Touch Me

Starting with the film's title, writer/director Julie Davis takes on the supposed conflicts of today's single gal: madonna versus whore, romance versus sex, balding Jewish mensch versus dashing British cad. Yes, it's Ally McBeal meets Woody Allen as Katie (Marla Schaffel), a 25-year-old virgin, diddles over the fate of her hymen. Smug and self-absorbed, she interrupts her self-pitying whining only to spew male-bashing bile with her salacious pal Janet (Meredith Scott Lynn). It's a bitter, cliché-infested look at the folly of attraction and the "I'm Venus, you're Mars" school of gender typing. It's also downright distasteful: in one scene, Katie likens her dismal dating life to the Holocaust.

Although Davis is right to question the double standards surrounding women's sexuality, this ground was covered with more wit and insight by director Kevin Smith -- a man no less! -- in last year's Chasing Amy. Indeed, at one point, Katie and Janet accuse each other of hobbling feminism's advance. A more likely culprit? Self-loathing trash like this. At the Framingham and elsewhere in the suburbs.

-- Alicia Potter