Makeover

With The Shape of Things, filmmaker Neil LaBute returns to his earlier status as a "nasty piece of work." After taking a moral hiatus to direct the uneven black comedy Nurse Betty (2000) and the dreary love story Possession (2002), he is back to the severe old tricks he exhibited in his first two films, the upsetting but challenging In the Company of Men (1997) and the less successful Your Friends and Neighbors (1998), where he exposed the underbelly of men's emotions and insecurities, especially in the ongoing and always escalating battle of the sexes.
The Shape of Things originated as a 2001 play which LaBute wrote and directed. He admits the play was a partial response to the charge that he had portrayed men as cruel and heartless in their pursuit of sex and control. LaBute wanted to show that women could be just as insensitive, but with a twist.

He suggests that while men tend to showboat and "score" for the approval of their male peers (jock mentality at its most overt), women are more solitary in their conniving and cruelty, gleaning a more personal satisfaction from their psychological and physical manipulations. (When I interviewed LaBute I asked him about his penchant for unlikable characters behaving in despicable ways. He maintained that he has shown nothing onscreen that he doesn't see in real life on a regular basis.)

The Shape of Things centers on the relationship between Adam (Paul Rudd), a slightly chubby and disheveled English major at small (and allegorically named) Mercy College in California, and Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), an art student who is deadly serious about the power of art. Accordingly, they first meet at a campus art museum, where Adam is working part-time as a guard. Evelyn is there not to observe but to protest--spray paint in hand--the puritanical addition of a "fig leaf" on a nude statue. Adam is smitten with this dark and daring beauty, despite the fact that Evelyn (note the biblical names) would seem to be out of his league. They soon become a couple, much to the chagrin of Adam's good buddy, Philip (Frederick Weller). Philip is planning on marrying the sweet and unassuming Jenny (Gretchen Mol), whom Adam has long adored from afar.