Dating the Enemy

Australia | 1996 | Directed by Megan Simpson Huberman

Logline: A couple struggling to make a relationship work wake up one morning to find each trapped in the other’s body and the struggle to relate to friends and work becomes a comedic nightmare.

This is the kind of comedy Hollywood would never make. They dabble close with the premise of a much older character waking up inside a younger version of themselves (Big, Suddenly Thirty, 17 Again), or swapping bodies with an older family member (Vice Versa, 18 Again!), but never a guy and girl waking up to discover they’ve swapped bodies. Producers thought the general American public would probably find that too weird and perverse. Australians, however, thought the concept would be very funny, and screenwriter Megan Simpson Huberman got her incisive comedy of manners green-lit with two of the hottest stars of the moment.

Huberman directed as well (her second feature), but hasn’t made a feature since, which is a shame since she effortlessly captures fantastic nuances of femininity and masculinity, and elicits two superbly entertaining central performances from Guy Pearce and Claudia Karvan, along with great support from Lisa Hensley and Pippi Grandison, amongst others.

Guy Pearce is Brett, a fastidious and arrogant pop music television show presenter. Claudia Karvan is Tash, a messy and emotional science journalist. The actors are terrific as their respective characters, but the real comedy is sparked when through divine cosmic intervention they inhabit each other’s bodies. Brett’s mind is in Tash’s body, and vice versa. Pearce and Karvan nail their opposite characters, and it makes for an hilarious time.

It gets kind of sticky, but not before truths emerge and compromises are reached. It’s definitely a feel-good movie, and despite the inherent tacky trappings of such genres, Dating the Enemy rises above these because of its swift pacing, a refusal to play dumb, its honest portrayals of the insecurities and weaknesses of each sex, and the calibre of acting. It’s almost the kind of movie that wouldn’t get made anymore; there’s an element of the extroverted 80s hidden in the movie, even though it was made in the mid-90s.

Essentially Dating the Enemy is a very well-made television movie. There’s nothing especially cinematic about it, it has a small cast, and it plays things pretty safely, apart from the perverse notion of having sex with your own body whilst inside someone else’s (that’s the part mainstream Hollywood would have trouble with). But there are so many funny scenes and moments that Dating the Enemy remains fresh and unfettered, like the best romantic comedies. It’s the heart and soul of the story that counts, and Brett and Tash are a classic example of the age-old proven theory of opposites attract.

Dating the Enemy was made a year before Pearce became the Hollywood A-lister, and several years before Karvan became an Australian household name in TV’s The Secret Lives of Us. Pearce was still riding high from his camp turn in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and his command of effeminacy no doubt secured him the role in Dating the Enemy. Karvan had been quietly carving a career in television and smaller features, and then landed the lead in the audience favourite The Heartbreak Kid, but opposite Guy Pearce she shines most brightly.

Dating the Enemy wasn’t released internationally, and much of the Aussie humour will be lost on international audiences, but the universal life lessons and the wonderfully funny idiosyncrasies of being male and female make it instantly accessible, and it’s definitely one of the best movies set in my lovely adopted home town of Sydney.

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Dating the Enemy DVD is courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment, many thanks!