After dealing with physically and socially challenged men in Heavy and Copland, James Mangold has decided to focus on women in his new film Girl, Interrupted. Based on the best-selling memoir by Susanna Kaysen of her two year stay at a psychiatric hospital during the late 1960s, the film stars doe-eyed Winona Ryder as the 17-year-old Susanna, and Angelina Jolie as Lisa, her alluring sociopathic buddy.
When Susanna is diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder, she
has to decide is whether to become sane or slip into self-absorbed
craziness - it's as black and white as that.
The film starts off bad, gets worse and then somehow redeems itself
without ever being satisfying. The period feel is great and some of the
smaller stories are fine especially that of Daisy, a Lewinsky-esque woman
who craves roast chicken and laxatives and is the sexual toy of her
father. But it doesn't go anywhere until Susanna realises the choice she
has to make. Ryder's performance is calm but sharp especially when
compared to the histrionics of Jolie, who seems to be emulating Brad
Pitt's oft-employed versions of madness. The appearance of Vanessa
Redgrave as compassionate Dr Wick is a welcome grounding relief.
We're in similar territory to One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, made by Mangold's mentor Milos Forman, but this film is not nearly as resonant or as well executed. Ryder and especially Jolie, have become poster girls of dementia for impressionable young women and Girl, Interrupted may have been a stronger film if it didn't have such attractive young women as its stars.
Reviewed by Iain Tibbles
Heavy - kamera.co.uk review
James Mangold - kamera interview
Girl, Interrupted pages at the Internet Movie Database
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