Monster's Ball opens with the sound of Billy Bob Thornton vomiting. This is not what is known as seducing an audience, but at least we know we are in the hands of a confident director. He is Marc Forster, a 31 -year-old Swiss, and judging from the exceptional performances here, he has a generous way with actors. Thornton and Heath Ledger, who seems to be channeling Michael Rooker, play father-and-son prison guards somewhere in a cruddily picturesque Georgia; Halle Berry is the wife of a condemned prisoner played by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. The centerpiece of this deadpan melodrama, at least in the pre-ratings-board-review print I saw, is an epic sex scene that may be the most vigorous between two actual movie stars—it would be indiscreet to say which two—since Last Tango in Paris. It has the additional virtue of actually being about sex, about the way desperation can fuel lust, which can in turn burst emotional dams. Whatever its flaws, Monster's Ball is frank about love and death. One more thing: Combs, whose every posture reflects the 11 years his character has spent in a cell, deserves an Oscar nomination. (There, I said it. Now I can die and go to quote-whore hell.) (Rating: ★★★½)