January 13–20, 2000

movies

Bad Girls in Trouble

A loony bin-bound Winona Ryder resists Angelina Jolie’s sociopathic charms.

by Cindy Fuchs

Girl, Interrupted
Directed by James Mangold
A Columbia release
Opens Friday at area theaters

There’s something endlessly fascinating about girls in trouble. Surely, the social and political frameworks change over years — said girls are menaced by reefer madness, bad boys on motorcycles, drug dealers or pimps, pregnancy, sadistic teachers, jungle wildlife, aliens from outer space, prom queens, serial killers, lascivious relatives, even icebergs — but the fundamental idea is remarkably consistent. That this trouble often takes the form of a "personal" crisis (identity issues, concerns about fitting in) makes sense, in that the crisis is usually resolved by a return from internal anxiety to a comfort provided by familiar surroundings.

I had a feeling that Girl, Interrupted would be more of the same. And yet, I confess, I was looking forward to seeing it, hoping that it would be different. I know I should know better, but I see how I came to feel optimistic. Take, for example, the title, which suggests a certain self-consciousness about this process of coming into being (though, looking back, I can see that the becoming is only supposed to be interrupted, not derailed, which was the plot I had in mind). I had heard good things about (but admittedly, hadn’t read) Susanna Kaysen’s acclaimed book and knew that director James Mangold was sensitive and interesting. And I confess, I was likely blinded by my abiding affection for the film’s primary girl stars, Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, usually brave performers.

I see now that the warning signs were in place before I went to the theater. The feel-good soundtrack markets a strange nostalgia for a time and place — America, 1967 — when life was often lousy for girls. Then there’s the ad campaign, featuring that fabulously large Winona Face, jaggedly ripped across the middle, which is dramatic to the point of silliness. And — perhaps worst of all — the cast includes Whoopi Goldberg and Vanessa Redgrave, both respected performers, of course, but not prone (at least lately) to selecting strong material. Recall Redgrave in The House of the Spirits or Mission: Impossible; and as for Whoopi, when was the last time she had a role where she wasn’t patiently instructing obtuse white folks in moral matters?

In Girl, Interrupted, Goldberg plays Nurse Valerie, a character whose very name gives away her function. Nurse Valerie is the chief day nurse at Claymoore Hospital outside Boston, a place where girls in trouble are psychanalyzed and medicated (and sometimes electro-shocked) back into normalcy. The patient who leads us into this suburban house of horrors is Susanna (Ryder), whose crime against the local tranquility appears to be "chasing a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka," as well as some previous acting out in the form of acting depressed, not doing her homework, being "promiscuous" (though the only "boyfriend" we see is Jared Leto, obviously not someone with whom viewers are supposed to have problems) and, oh yeah, sleeping with one of her high school teachers. Given all this background, one Dr. Crumble (!) suggests to Susanna’s distraught parents that she be sent away for "rest" and "rehabilitation" (the fact that Crumble is played by the always invidious Kurtwood Smith sets him up as the villain right away).

Once at Claymoore, Susanna makes the acquaintance of various stock loony-bin characters, slightly tweaked to resemble teenaged girls. There’s the incessant liar Georgina (Clea Duvall), bulimic Daisy (Brittany Murphy, Alicia Silverstone’s "project" in Clueless), terminally fearful Polly (Elisabeth Moss), who seems to have tried to burn her own face off. And then there’s Lisa (Jolie), the requisite wild child and Claymoore veteran, repeatedly escaping and being hauled back in, so that she might be doped up and duly scolded for her misconduct. Lisa is gorgeous, passionate and energetic, especially compared to the scared-into-obedience girls, who have no obvious capacity for the courage and intimacy with which Lisa seems so generous.

It’s unfortunate but no surprise that the film is setting you up here, making Lisa seductive so that we might follow along with Susanna’s rather simplistic initial decision to follow her and resist the doctors, who, as played by Redgrave and Jeffrey Tambor, are so bland and clueless that there’s no real decision to be made. And when Susanna learns her lesson — that this initial decision is wrong, that the undomesticated, rule-breaking girl is emphatically not the correct role model — it comes too easily, with a contrived scene that suddenly displays Lisa’s cruelty and sociopathology.

How much harder could it have been to have complicated the questions here? All the girl actors — including Ryder and Jolie, who pass well enough as teenagers — give more nuanced performances than their dialogue or situations would call for. But to no avail: The film showcases stereotypes, from the gently wise doctor to the nurturing black woman to the protagonist with a notebook. Susanna’s desires to become a writer, disparaged by her mostly unseen parents, are encouraged by her gently wise doctor and realized at last. Hence, the film/book.

All this is not to say that Girl, Interrupted doesn’t offer moments that look complex. On some nights, the girls steal away into the hospital basement to play with an abandoned bowling game, or into one of the doctors’ offices in order to go through their own files. At this point, we see clearly the arrogance and wrongheadedness of the process of medicalization, as the girls read out to each other the reasons for their incarceration. It’s worth noting that in this minute, the movie does reach its most acute insight, that most girls do not conform to dominant social ideals. More to the point, this insight underlines that most movies do conform to marketable formulas. And that’s sad.

But perhaps the saddest aspect is this: By the time Susanna has survived and profited from her 18 months "inside," and is headed home (laughably, in the same cab, with the same driver, as when she left), you’re not feeling that she’s going on to a better or improved life, but that she’s going on to be regulated and refined. Having gotten past her interruption, she’s on her way to fitting in.