Movie: You're Dating a Narcissist!

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

You know you're a redneck's squeeze when—

Plot Overview

NYC authoress and psychologist Dr. Judy (Marisa Tomei) appears in closeup giving a lecture from her book, You're Dating a Narcissist. A narcissist, she tells us, is a clinical term for what's commonly called a player or a womanizer. She states their obvious moves along the comedic lines of, You Know You're a Redneck When— She is overly invested emotionally in her subject causing her colleague/friend Diane (Sherry Cola) to remark, “You've got your own issues.” Diane is the pot calling the kettle black. She's fixated on her departed lover who's now sporting a wife. Shakespeare said it best: “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Judy had been jilted by her now ex-husband Edward Xavier James III [!] who'd won her heart by blowing a snow­flake off her cheek, of all things. Their only remaining connection is their grown daughter Eva (Ciara Bravo) an artist in L.A..

When Eva sends her mom news that she's met her “soul mate” Theo (Marco Pigossi) and they are in love, heli­copter mom w/side­kick Diane fly to L.A. to intervene. Under intense scrutiny of him, she finds only two tells: he maintains a business relation with his undeclared ex-fiancée of two years back, and he has a second phone. Narcissists typically have a secondary source of affirmation, and they've got a secret electronic device, in his case a phone for being on call as a doctor. Mom's meddling only serves to move up the wedding date and get her­self uninvited. Mean­while, her high toned come­backs to the attentive resort owner Daniel (Jose Maria Yazpik) where they're staying cause him to remark on how people from New York talk funny.

Ideology

As YDaN showcases alternate forms of court­ship/marriage, it behooves us to start with a working definition from Dr. Ide: “The Con­tem­por­ary Christian stan­dard was defined not by the bible but gen­er­ated by Roman law as defined by the jurist Modes­tinus who argued that marriage was ‘consortium omnis vitae, divini et humani iuris communi­catio: a life-long part­ner­ship, and a sharing of civil and religious rights’” (83–5). The apostle Paul honored religious rights (1Cor. 7:2-3) “to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and like­wise also the wife unto the husband.” The civil authorities in America (and else­where) deal with civil rights but respect the religious. They allow any religion to perform the wedding ceremony, and if it's done by the JP, the participants must bring their own witnesses so as not to violate the establishment clause of the constitution—marriage being the start of a domestic church.

As for Christians accommodating civil law, Ken Johnson, Th.D. quotes Mathetes—a.d. 130—who studied under Paul: “Christians follow the customs of their native lands in regard to marriage, food, clothing, and conduct. They marry and have children, but they never have abortions. They obey all the laws of their country” (86). Our various states may have minor differences in separation of relations, minimum age to marry, VD testing, etc., but they generally honor each other's marriages regardless and Christians follow suit. YDaN introduces some variation in acceptance between traditional/religious and Puritan/legal views, which has proved to be controversial, so it behooves us for comparison to take a variant whose terms are widely agreed upon: marriage between cousins. There is no religious prohibition against it per se, but the religious follow the states' prohibition. Let's look at an affair in a short story by David James Poissant:

He's married, and she's waiting for him not to be. He'll never not be. She knows this and she doesn't. She knows this and at the same time thinks: Someday.

In a heartbeat. That's what she told him. In a heart­beat, she'd leave the man she married.

But Arnie won't leave his daughter, his wife, his house or his yard, his money, his dogs. Far as she can tell, every­thing is as he likes it—his cake, her too.

So where does she fit in? What is she to him?

She is cuff links. She's a pocket watch. A thing slipped on for special occasions. (105-6)

Massachusetts the original Puritan strong­hold started the ball rolling with repect to same-sex marriage. Maine followed suit passing Proposition 1 handily, allowing such being a domestic partner­ship relabeled. New England itself is culturally Puritan territory. According to cultural historian David Hackett Fischer the Puritans regarded marriage not as a sacred in­sti­tution, but rather as pro­viding a family con­text where its mem­bers could socially live out the grace of God. The Puritans had “a cultural idea of marriage that was unique to the Puritan colonies. … The Puritans of New England rejected all the Anglican ideas. They believed that marriage was not a religious but a civil contract” (77). In the New England states—& NY & DC—the civil contract was the whole kit and caboodle, so once laws against sodomy were repealed it was a simple matter of equal rights to open (civil) marriage to homo­sexuals. The rest of the states did not abide such a redefinition, but the Court/judges stepped in to force acceptance. Quoting from the “Catholic Sentinel” of July 3, 2015 (15):

The main opinion recognized in several places the role of religious beliefs in the questions surrounding same-sex marriage. Kennedy said toward the conclusion of his 28-page opinion that “it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.”

The First Amendment ensures protection for religious organizations and individuals as they seek to teach the principles “that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths,” he continued, and to “their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons.”

That's the same predicament the kissing cousins above were facing should they come out of the closet:

“Let's just come out with it,” he said. “Come out, and fuck what people think.”

She'd offered all the old arguments: Their mothers would disown them. Their friends would freak out. And their jobs, who knew?

Arnie was patient. “Cousin-fucking,” he said, “is not grounds for termination.”

“No,” she said.

“Please,” he said.

In the end, it was Linda who said, “Never,” and Arnie who moved on. (Poissant 112)

In our movie Diane has a female love interest who has a “wife.” Same-sex “marriage” was foisted on the majority of states by a Court/judges who figured those partners love each other just as heteros do. How­ever, in this movie they all seem to be into self-love. All that remains of true love is one offspring Eva whom the homos would have been incapable of producing. A California budding romance seems the only worthy one here. California with its Proposition 8 defining marriage as hetero­sexual. And the businessman there who remarked that New Yorkers talk funny, a non-New England state that broke ranks with the others who wanted to preserve the hetero stipulation for marriage.

Production Values

“” (2025) was directed by Ann Marie Allison. It was written by Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly. It stars Sherry Cola, Marisa Tomei and Ciara Bravo. Tomei was marvelous in annoyance with a back­drop of an institutional change that troubled a lot of people. She was just playing her part, and New Yorkers visiting California was bound to be dicey.

The movie is not rated. It is more cringe than humor. There's an extra scene shown with the credits for those who can take more of it. Runtime is 1½ hours.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

It will appeal to people with weird tastes but may prove intolerable for those with run-of-the-mill expectations. I survived but left during the extra scene. There was only so much I could take.

Movie Ratings

Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability for children: Not rated, but not recommended. Special effects: Wake up and smell the 1990s technology. Video Occasion: Good for Likeminded Groups. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Two and a half stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Print.

Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. Print, Web.

Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homo­phobia and Hetero­sexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.

Mathetes, Epistle to Diognetus 5. Quoted in Ken Johnson, Ancient Church Fathers. Copyright 2010 by Ken Johnson. San Bernadino, CA, 07 April 2018. Download print.

Poissant, David James. “Last of the Great Land Mammals.” An earlier version appeared in Washington Square, 2013. From The Heaven of Animals. Compilation copyright © 2014 by David James Poissant. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2014. Print.