| LOST AND DELIRIOUS |
 2001
- Canada
Director: Léa Pool - Reviewed by Linda
Lost and Delirious is basically Dead Poets Society at a girls' boarding school, with an angstful romance between two students (Piper Perabo and Jessica Paré) and all the teen drama that goes with it. Except the screenplay sucks, the acting sucks, and Jessica Paré looks like the love child of Nancy Kerrigan and Liv Tyler... and I mean that in a bad way. When the audience laughed, it was more often AT the movie instead of WITH the movie. Piper plays Paulie (mmm... alliteration!), a cute tomboyish spitfire who is engaging in an affair with her roommate Victoria. All is good and well, including the great luck that they have a very tolerant mousey-roommate, funnily enough nicknamed Mouse (Mischa Barton), who watches them with wide and tolerant eyes as they rustle around in nicely-moonlight bedsheets every night. Alas, one day Victoria's little sister bursts in, like those pesky freshmen do, to find her sister naked in bed with Paulie. Vic freaks out, dumps Paulie. Paulie freaks out, and adopts a wounded hawk in the forest. Healing raptor becomes not so subtly symbolic of Paulie needing to heal and break free. Vic quickly finds a boyfriend and they have sex against a tree. Paulie leaps on the cafeteria table and quotes Shakepeare to Vic in a fit of love. Blah. Blah. Blah. I'm not really sure why this movie chapped me from the start. High expectations? Probably. Bad script? Yes. Annoying acting? Yes. Soft-focus lesbian love scenes to get Ebert & Roeper to give it an "enthusiastic thumbs up" (so to speak)? Definitely. It is a story worth telling... but for god's sakes, don't dumb down the characters to the point where you just want to give them a collective spanking (and no, I don't mean that in an erotic way). If Léa Pool could've just tapped into the subtle style that made Set Me Free (Emporte-moi) such a gorgeous movie, this could have been a halfway decent film. Alas, it is practically unwatchable. |
|
Agree? Disagree? Go to the Forum! | Back to Video/DVD | Back to SIFF 2001 |
|
Home
| Currently Playing | For
Rent | Video Obsession ©2000 Moviepie e-mail us |
When
all was said and done, and the Seattle International Film Festival went dark
for another year, Lost and Delirious took the crown as my choice for the fest's biggest disappointment. 