Movie Review - Dating the Enemy (1996)

Country: Australia

Language: English

Type of story: Body Swap

Sexuality: Doesn’t change / potentially bi

Nudity: No

How I watched it: Free on Amazon Prime. (Watch Here) 

When I last watched it: July 31, 2024

My synopsis (spoiler-free):  During an argument on their one-year anniversary,Tash (Claudia Karvan) flippantly wishes that she and her boyfriend, Brett (Guy Pearce) could trade places so he could experience how poorly she’s being treated. During the full moon, her wish is granted.

* * Spoilers ahead * *

Brett has a TV talk show and interviews musicians. Tash writes a science column for a newspaper.  One year ago they met at a friend’s Valentine’s Day party.  Despite having nothing in common, they manage to hit it off and stay together for a year.

On this year’s Valentine's Day, their relationship is clearly rocky. Brett is late picking up Tash, and regifts to her roses that had been given to him.  They go to Brett’s company party.  Brett ignores Tash while mingling with everyone else. When Tash overhears that Brett is being considered for a job in New York, she is furious.  This argument kick-starts the movie as both Brett and Tash are airing their grievances. At the heart of the argument and the movie, is that they’re trying to change each other. Brett says, “You’re trying to change me into you.” Tash replies, “I wish you could be me, so you could see how I feel for once.  I wish I could be you, so I could show you what an idiot you've become.” 

The Transformation: During the next full moon (which may or may not be the following evening or 20 days later - see Random Notes), both Brett and Tash are napping in the evening.  In a glitter of light, both swap bodies. 

But not clothes or locations. That’s interesting because in most body swap stories, it's the soul or spirit that does the moving.  In this movie, the bodies, in a shimmer of light, morph into a replica of the other.

Brett wakes up first because his phone rings.  He gets up, and while cleaning his face, he sees Tash in the mirror. He’s startled at first, but once he realizes that’s his reflection he does the standard post gender transformation boob grab.  Then he goes to check if his junk is gone.  When he realizes it's not there, he screams, “Nooo!”

Brett then goes to Tash’s flat.  She’s not quite awake when she gets out of bed to answer the door.  She too is startled when she sees herself at the door.  She looks at her hands, then looks at the visitor. “Brett is that you?”

Does this Movie pass the Bechdel Test? No. But I wouldn’t expect a romantic comedy from the 90’s to do so.  We do have a good number of women in the cast, but all of the interaction is talking about men and relationships.

Sexuality: Unlike all of the other body swap movies I’ve reviewed, this one actually featured adults. Not just adults, but a sexually active couple. So we get the opportunity to see whether or not the swapped characters will test their sexuality.  The first attempt, Brett convinces scientist Tash to perform the ultimate experiment - to see what sex is like from the other side.  Unfortunately, neither of them could get into the mood when they attempted it.  

Brett does suggest they get back together because he would rather date her than date guys. Tash rejects this on the grounds that he hasn’t learned anything. 

Later after their friends’ wedding, they both wind up sleeping with someone else because they’re drunk.  Tash is essentially date raped by Brett’s colleague, Collette (Pippa Grandison), and Brett has sex with his best friend Rob (Matt Day).  Both feel extremely guilty about it, but neither feels weirded out.  Brett even thinks, “Well, this is going to make basketball weird now.”  Finally at the end of the movie, Brett and Tash finally have sex with each other.  It's debatable in TG/TF fiction whether having sex with your former body makes you bisexual.  But I was keeping score. Both our main characters had sex with two members of the opposite sex. 

They adapt. Towards the end of the movie, they both seem to adapt to the new lives.  Brett has befriended Laetitia. He’s started taking up some sort of yoga dance.  Tash is hanging out more with the guys and playing basketball. They also start taking ownership of their lives.  Brett quits Tash’s job at the newspaper. Tash is trying to suggest new guests for Brett’s talkshow.

Body Swap by the numbers.  They swap.  They’re confused.  They attempt to live each other’s lives.  They fail and start to sabotage each other’s life.  Then they learn to adapt.  Finally, they learn the lesson they were supposed to learn.  They swap back.

The Swap Back: Once they acknowledge “opposites attract” and they love each other for who they are, they make love.  And after falling asleep in each other’s arms, they swap back.

How it ends: Brett is offered that job in NYC, but he instead turns it into a global talk show. “Like the internet for TV!”  He then asks Tash to move in with him.

Random Notes:

• I was a little confused about Australian weather. Tash arrives at the Valentines party in a coat and knit hat stating she is cold, yet the party is playing Strip Trivial Pursuit on the rooftop. Elron did some further research:

• The movie is set in Sydney, Australia in February 1996 (with a flashback to 1995).

• The high temp in Sydney on Tuesday, February 14, 1995, was 25°C (77°F) at 4 p.m.

• By 11 p.m. the temp had dropped to 22°C (72°F).

• A year later, Valentines Day 1996, the high was 21°C (70), but Tash is wearing a skirt without a coat or hat. And later a cocktail dress.  

• Maybe the writers wanted to imply that Tash was cold in the emotional sense the night she met Brett?

• Since Elron was researching historical astronomy, he found that: 

• In Feb 1996 in Sydney the full moon was February 5th.

• Tash makes her wish on 14th, Valentines Day.

• The next full moon was 20 days later, on March 5th, so that's when the swap should begin. (But the movie implies that the swap happens the next day (the 15th)

• Therefore, we can conclude the writers of this screenplay didn’t care about astronomical accuracy. They most likely didn’t anticipate a pair of TG/TF fiction enthusiasts dissecting their screenplay 28 years later.

• Brett: “Getting into a relationship with a woman these days is like...it's like getting into a cab with a driver that doesn't speak English. I mean you tell them where you wanna go when you start off, and they nod and smile and you think they've understood. And then all of a sudden you look up, and you're driving down 'moving in' street, or 'having a baby' street, and you say 'no I never wanted to go here' and then they start yelling at you in some language you don't even understand. Man, I tell you something, from now on I'm walking.”

• It’s the 90s. Therefore Guy Pearce has a Brad Pitt thing going on.  Claudia Karvan after the initial swap looks like Gillian Anderson.

• When they start to live their swapped lives, Tash notices every woman says “Hi, Brett” to her.  Brett on the other hand, thinks every woman at the newspaper is a secretary and treats them like it. Which is kinda annoying, because this type of workplace misogyny was already in Switch (1991) and repeated in Sam (2015).

• “What is Pearl Jam?” Seriously, Tash?

• “I want to talk to people.” - Tash remarking that guys don’t really talk to each other and her attempts to gossip with other guys doesn’t work.

• Yes, I called the Collette and Tash sex scene “date rape.” Tash was clearly drunk. She also told Collette “No.” For some odd reason, ‘90s movies like to say a woman can’t rape a man.

• When Brett has sex with Rob, he realizes how bad Rob was in bed as the sex only lasts six minutes.

Overall impression: 

Overall it’s kinda meh. It’s not awful. The problem is I’ve already seen so many body swap movies that this one just doesn’t stand out. Since this one is from 1996, it's more of an indictment of body swap movies that came after this.  They all use the same formula and they don’t say anything new about sex and gender.  OK - I am glad Tash and Brett did experience sex as each other at least once. Most mainstream movies are afraid of the homophobic backlash and won’t touch that with a 10 foot pole. This one did and is better for it.  It’s worth a watch. Come for the Valentines Day party, stay for the Strip Trivial Pursuit.