Switch (movie)

The movie poster is exploitive, but not more so than the film itself.

Switch is a 1991 movie directed by Blake Edwards, starring Ellen Barkin.

The premise is a basic gender switcher -- one person's soul/mind in the body of another person, of a different gender. Here, the male character is a sexist jerk who dies near the beginning of the film. He is returned to the body of a woman (Ellen Barkin) to make amends, clear up unfinished business (his murderer), etc.

The movie does not do much beyond the typical in the way of exploring sex or gender: men and women are hilariously different in their dress and speech! (Ellen Barkin, like Lily Tomlin before her in "All of Me", does a good job acting this out.) And the usual "a straight man in a woman's body -- will s/he like men or women?" Bo-oring. However, of lesbian interest, the latter is explored in one somewhat sexy scene between Ellen Barkin's character and JoBeth Williams' character.

Most unfortunately, the movie uses one of the most offensive tropes of all: redemption through death in childbirth.