| THE RULES OF ATTRACTION |
 2002 –
USA
Director: Roger Avary - Reviewed by Eric
And so on, and so forth. The film's official description says The Rules of Attraction is about a love triangle, but it's more like a love dodecahedron, with as little at its center as there is in the characters' lives. To elaborate on the plot would accomplish little, seeing as I'm still having trouble discerning one. It utilizes the popular device of showing us a scene from the ending in the beginning, then going back and revealing what led up to those events—but when nothing really happens plot-wise, it isn't very effective. What there is is a whole lot of graphic sex, alcohol, cocaine, and more alcohol. The story takes place at Camden College in the mid-'80s. We meet Sean, who deals drugs, sleeps with half the girls in school, and is getting love letters from a secret admirer. We meet Lauren, who is a virgin and is saving herself for her boyfriend Victor, who is off backpacking in Europe. We meet the scheming Paul, who is openly bisexual, and has made Sean his newest objective. We meet Lara, who is Lauren's roommate and doesn't do much in the film except be a huge whore. Frequent voice-overs inform us what's going in these characters' heads, but it's never a whole lot. The film is thoroughly episodic, frequently with little or no connection between one episode and the next. This could have worked if the episodes had revealed dimensions to the characters, other than the gleeful nastiness of their thoughts and actions. As it is, the viewer gets example after example of how callous, immoral, and alcoholic they are, but not much else. Luckily, this effect is outrageous and entertaining enough to keep your attention for most of the movie. James Van Der Beek obviously enjoys playing such a scumbag, and he's always a pleasure to behold. Ian Somerhalder seems born to play the smoldering Paul. In the film's best scene, Faye Dunaway makes a cameo as Paul's mother, even more inebriated than he is, and she's wonderful. My biggest complaint about Attraction is that it comes across as being stylish largely for the sake of being stylish. Visual style ought to be used to make a film come alive—and this one does—but that doesn't seem to be its main function. Nearly every sequence in Attraction seems to announce its own coolness. For instance, in one clever and striking shot (or two, depending on how you look at it), Sean and Lauren are having a conversation in the hall. The screen is split between two close-ups of each of their faces as they speak, and at the end, the camera in each frame swings away from their faces and the two frames join to make one image of Sean and Lauren facing each other. It's hard to judge a movie like this; it's hard to tell if there's any sort of rich meaning beneath its surface, or if it's just an excuse for teen heart-throbs of the WB to talk dirty. American Psycho (whose main character was Sean Bateman's older brother, and which was also based on a book by Bret Easton Ellis) satirized the shallowness and materialism of the '80s. But The Rules of Attraction doesn't even seem to be able to finish its sentence (quite literally, at one particularly frustrating point). It's a dark and often entertaining guilty pleasure, but it puts style WAY over substance, resulting in a film that only goes from "Point A" to "Point A and a half." DVD NOTES - by LindaThere are not many DVD extras here beyond the typical and mundane. However notable exception goes to the inclusion of the Sundance Channel's "Anatomy of a Scene," which is always a bonus for any film lover. When I saw this in the menu, I thought there was only one scene that would truly justify an in-depth analysis... and, yep, they chose the correct one. Eric mentions this scene above: the screen is split in two, following the characters of Sean and Lauren as they go through the motions of a Saturday morning, only to eventually run into each other in a hallway. They have a conversation, flirting and joking with each other, until a symbolic "connection" is made. At that point, with perfect timing and painstaking camera angles, the two split scenes merge into one right before your eyes. It would be gimmicky if it weren't so damn cool looking. Seeing it unfold in the film the first time is fascinating, but watching the movie magic that went to it is even more impressive. |
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Paul wants Sean, who wants Lauren, who used to date Paul. Lauren also
wants Sean, but is in love with Victor, who sleeps with her roommate
Lara. Sean also sleeps with Lara. Paul used to want Mitchell, but he
dumped him for Candace, who wants to have a threesome with Paul and
Mitchell.
