What are the rules? Read a love letter, dance in your underwear, and love yourself.
Written: Oct 13 '02 (Updated Oct 13 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: the cast, especially Ian Somerhalder and Shannyn Sossaman. James Van Der Beek in places.
Cons: James Van Der Beek in places. What's up with that 4-minute long Victor section?
The Bottom Line: With its satirical use of music and sly wit and enough care for the negative aspects of its three leads, The Rules of Attraction is an intriguing, maddening delight.
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| tigger500's Full Review: The Rules of Attraction |
I had unusually high expectations for this film. I'm a fan of satirical film. I love that teaser poster. I didn't like the book. I loathe and despise Pulp Fiction, a film that grows more and more annoying, pathetic, and manipulative with each viewing (remember important films aren't always good films.) but I kinda dig Killng Zoe. I loathe Dawson's Creek, but anyone with a brain knows that it takes talent to say that sh*tty dialogue with a straight face and play Dawson for 5 years and still retain some semblance of sanity. I didn't like anything Shannyn Sossaman was in, but I was riveted by Ian Somerhalder's performance in MTV's Anatomy of a Hate Crime (yes, I did say MTV. It remains, with Daria, the only worthwhile thing the channel has ever put together). I think Jessica Biel is a terrible actress, but I reasoned that playing the hoe in a movie would at least be interesting to watch if she somehow winked at her 7th Heaven co-horts or showed a tit or some cheek.
In short, I was hoping for alot, but ultimately the anticipation and fascination, admittedly, came more from the casting and directing choice than the material itself. Sue me.
That said, The Rules of Attraction is the closest thing American film has come to the spirit and creativity of experimental film...meaning non-linear, emotive continuity instead of narrative, not wacky exposure, editing and color palettes. Roger Avary has managed to craft a funny movie that perfectly displays the self-indulgence of the early 20's and with the three leads, Paul, Sean, and Lauren, he has managed to create fascinating characters who totally live in their heads (hello, that is what the voiceover means) and used them to show self-indulgence clashing with reality.
We don't know Paul, Sean and Lauren. By the end all we do know is that they are a little less narcisisstic and more cynical, but as full-bodied characters, we know nothing. They are tools. Tools that Avary uses to critique, comment on, poke fun at, and skewer pop culture and post-adolescent confusion. The backwards thing is intriguing because it allows us to see the isolation of the lead characters and that they are completely unaware that they feel it. To them, the world is moving backward because it doesn't know how cool and wonderful they are. Paul, Sean and Lauren want us to care about them because they care about themselves. But Avary doesn't make fun of them for this, he merely shows how they stumble through maturation on their way to realizing they think far too much of themselves.
Ian Somerhalder is damn fine. Let's just say it. He manages to be beautiful without seeming porcelain delicate and effeminate. In the context of the film, Paul thinks those eyes and looks should be enough to get anyone he wants and this is what drives his character. It's pathetic yes. It's been said that he is the most offensive gay character ever put on celluloid, but I think that these reviewers are missing the point. Paul is not self-loathing. Just the opposite, he is quite comfortable. His sexuality defines him only because he chooses for it to. That is a world of difference from sexuality defining you because one allows it to. Paul is a product of the era that thinks that to be gay, or be black, or be a vegetarian, is the seed from which every other facet of your personality and being grows. He is how Avary mocks a culture that thinks that the "gay character" in and of itself is compelling enough to base a film or your life around. Somerhalder is attuned to this. He doesn't love Sean, he just wants Sean to love him as much as he loves himself. It's a gutsy performance from the constant near-nudity to the nature of Paul's neuroses. Paul does come off in a bad light, but that is only if you miss the overall tone and humor of the film.
Shannyn Sossaman is quite good too. She and Jessica Biel are a delight. I am quite surprised at both performances. They are unabashedly narcisstic and emotionally empty women and Sossaman and Biel never flinch from full portrayal of that. But to see how Sossaman interacts and responds to Van Der Beek's Sean after he pretends to kill himself is the moment where she really becomes the center of the film. Both actresses find a way to avoid cloying and self-deprecating and portray their characters as 20-somethings who f*ck and do drugs because they truly want to, not because they feel that they have too.
James Van Der Beek is less successful because he does attempt to three-dimensionalize his character along narrative lines. He should have known that, like Paul, Sean doesn't love Sossaman's Lauren he just wants her to love him as much as he loves himself. Van Der Beek is effective at Sean's callous disregard for Paul but can't seem to muster enough charisma to make us believe that he is really as insane as he supposed to be. Patrick Bateman was a nutcase and truly deranged and Sean Bateman was the catalyst for the creation of that character (as Rules was written first). I'd like to blame it on Avary's script for gutting the best parts of Sean's character from the book, but there is more than enough here. It's not a bad performance, not ineffective (until the third act) to be sure, but ultimately, it is pretty shallow.
The Rules of Attraction is not a complete triumph. Avary veers into self-indulgent territory himself with the 4-minute long Victor section so late in the film. Thematically, it makes sense since Victor is the most conventionally and out-wardly vain character (and played remarkably well by Kip Pardue. Who knew?), but it is actually more repititious and annoying than funny.
Clifton Collins Jr, a very good actor here, is wasted and really doesn't serve a purpose thematically or emotionally. We really don't need to know where the drugs come from, just that Sean deals them. This character could have been exised for more of the interesting stuff regarding Sean from the novel, but then the film wouldn't have gotten the loathsome R and been so widly available. Pros and cons, people, pros and cons.
And the film is off balance in the middle. Paul disappears for a long patch and so does Lauren. I'm not sure that the scene with Faye Dunaway, Swoozie Kurtz, and Russel Sams (hilarious if too self-consciously over-the-top, as Dick) needed to be so long. Neither did the overdosing freshman sequence.
The end is tricky to because by having the bookends we are led to believe that who we met in the beginning is who we leave at the end, and that isn't what happens. I tend to think as a directing device it is interesting to introduce the characters, seemingly at the end of things, only to realize by the end how much they lived in their heads. The ending of Rules of Attraction is the true ending, in my opinion, and it emotionally and thematically makes perfect sense. They no longer live in dream worlds where the objects of their affection rebuke them because they are stupid or mean, but because Paul, Sean, and Lauren are really just too wrapped up in themselves to be emotionally available. Witness the brilliant scene where Sean doesn't cry, but a snowflake falls and provides a surrogate tear.
All this means, my friends, that The Rules of Attraction is extremely difficult to like. My friend hated it. She understood what Avary was doing, but it didn't make her like it. I suspect that is what will happen. I loved it. I like that it was tonally cohesive, forgoing a typical narrative that wouldn't have allowed this kind of insightful and probing dissection of post-adolescent nihilism.
4.5 stars
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
tigger500
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Location: Washington DC
Reviews written: 75
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