Une vie volée

This is definitely one of the best films to deal with life inside a mental institution. This was the career maker for Angelina Jolie and it solidified Wynona Ryder's career. The person I really enjoyed in this film was Britanny Murphy as Daisy. She was a person who had a tough exterior but after you chipped away at that shell there was really a fragile little girl underneath. This film is definitely something I would watch again.

I loved this movie from on the first day I saw it. This story is so unique in its way showing the problems many people have to face when being young. The best thing about this movie is, that it's based upon the experience of the real Susanna Kaysen, which means that the story is not only real but also natural and not "brightened up" for entertainment. It shows reality as it is! The actors do a really great job and among other acting personalities we can find Whoopie Goldberg, Winona Ryder and Jared Leto which seem just perfect for the roles they embody. The story, which seems to me loving and cruel at the same time, is pictured by a wonderful musical score and great songs more or less known from those hard days known as the 60's. This movie is a MUST for everyone who is seeking for a deep, thoughtful and emotional film as well as great actors!

I came to the film with low expectations. I was simply stunned by how good it was.

Angelina Jolie is an absolutely PHENOMENAL actress. Her performance alone is worth watching the movie for. But unlike show-stoppers like Marissa Tomei in "My Cousin Vinnie," merely shines the brightest light in a luminescent cast.

The cinematography was innovative, but not distractingly so-- "Girl Interupted" shines primarily for its dramatic power, not as a mind-blowing work of art. It will not explode your vision of the mundane world in the same way that "American Beauty" might, but it will certainly probe you to question your way of seeing the world-- at least psychologically.

Winona Ryder challenged my preconception of her, and proved herself as more than a pretty-girl. Her performance was convincing as Suzanna, a confused high-school graduate who is eloquent and insightful on paper yet unable to a rticulate her own desperate melancholy.

The movie takes place primarily in the women's ward of a mental institution and follows the dynamic friendship between Lisa (Jolie's character) and Suzanna. Lisa is a kinetic, dynamic personality who cuts right to the "truth" of things. Her "truth" knows no boundaries and she is a controlling person prone to violence. Her piercing insights about people and social recklessness led to her to be institutionalized as a sociopath.

This is not a depressing film. Rather, it is suprisingly life-affirming. Not cloying, not sacherine, but not inpenetrably dark, either. Anyone seeking an angst-ridden portrayal of abuses in mental institutions should check out Jack Nicholson's "One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest."

This film has little of the violent anger of that old classic. Yet it does echo some of the ebulience, the defiance of authority and embracing of freedom at sometimes incalculable cost.

Performances by Whoppie Goldberg (in a serious and nuanced role) and Vanessa Redgrave were excellent, as expected.

With the exception of a few holywood gimmicks, predictable cuts and music, this is a nearly flawless film. Dead-on dramatically, and excellently scripted and based on an eloquent true-story by Suzana Keisen, this movie offers a glimpse of one intensely personal experience of truth. Without the quotation marks, dark cynicism, or pretensions that revelation so frequently entails.

GIRL, INTERRUPTED / (1999) ***1/2 (out of four)

By Blake French:

"Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted."

Those are some of the most memorable lines from James Mangold's honest, heartfelt drama "Girl Interrupted." The speaker is Susanna Kaysen, played by Winona Ryder. The film is based on the memoir of Kaysen herself, re-encountering the experiences she actually spent in a mental institution after an attempted suicide. The book of the same name was published in 1993; it spent time on almost every best-seller list, including 11 weeks on the New York Times.

It was in the 1980's when Kaysen began to revisit the most formative time in her life-20 years after the actual hospitalization. Memories of a nearly two-year stay at McLean Psychiatric Hospital, a private and exclusive institution near Cambridge, resurfaced while constructing her second book. She began writing vignettes of her experiences in the hospital, writing short stories about a time in her life she had not discussed for two decades.

"The only thing that ever made me less loony was writing," remembers Cambridge, Massachusetts-based writer Susanna Kaysen, author of her memoir, "Girl, Interrupted." Set in the turbulent 60's, the film details the young Kaysen, who finds herself at a mental institution for disturbed young women. Susanna makes friends, including a seductive and dangerous regular named Lisa (Angelina Jolie).

I have never read this book, but after watching "Girl, Interrupted" I am seriously considering it. The film is a powerful exploration into a depressing, bleak situation. When this movie was released theatrically in late 1999, I wondered how many people would want to see something about a young writer who tries to kill herself and then spends time in a nut-house. However, I was wrong to presume anything. "Girl, Interrupted" contains a vivid, convincing world for its characters, but never do we feel awkward while watching this film, but involved and concerned.

Screen-adapters James Mangold, Lisa Loomer, and Anna Hamilton Phelan construct a central character that is both consistent and empathetic. As the movie opens, we never see Kaysen's suicide attempt-there is no need to show it. This is a film about the results, not the action. We gradually learn about Kaysen as the movie progresses, thus the lack of initial character development. Even with little introductory material to establish her character, Winona Ryder creates a soothing, intriguing sole for Kaysen. The audience cares about Susanna before we even understand why she was sent to the mental institution.

The film's supporting cast, including Jared Leto, Clea Duvall, Elizabeth Moss, Jeffrey Tambor, Whoopi Goldberg, Vanessa Redgrave, and Angelina Jolie, who won an Academy Award for her performance, actually develops the mood of the film-an essential aspect of its overall impact. James Mangold ("Copland") has a ambiguous style here, but it works extraordinarily well in this film. "Girl, Interrupted" should do wonders for Susanna Kaysen's book; after watching the film, it is hard not to want to read the memoir.

It's always tough in today's goal-obsessed society to be someone who isn't quite sure what they want, but woman and minorities especially have it tough, because they seem to be automatically assigned "roles" for them(if you're a woman, even today, people still ask you when you're going to get married; if you're black and look big, people ask if you're an athlete). In the 60's, author Susanna Kaysen was in a similar position; she didn't know what she wanted to do with her life, but knew she didn't quite fit into the norm. Because of that, and because of some legitimate problems(she tried to kill herself by swallowing a bottle of aspirin), she went into a mental hospital and was tagged with having "borderline personality disorder," a catch-all phrase which meant whatever the doctors wanted it to mean. From her experiences in the hospital, Kaysen wrote the book GIRL, INTERRUPTED(the title comes from a Vermeer painting), and now comes the movie version from James Mangold and Winona Ryder.

Mangold's first two films, HEAVY and COPLAND, were both about main characters leading lives of quiet desperation; the pizza chef in HEAVY unable to express himself, and the partly sheriff in COPLAND who must learn to assume his responsibility with that position. Susanna fits in with those two characters, and Mangold does just as good a job with her, except for some melodramatic scenes near the end. There are some major themes going on here, like whether Susanna is really crazy, just spoiled, or conditioned to think something is wrong with her, the nature of what "crazy" is in the 60's, and of course being a woman at the time, but Mangold avoids making big statements for the most part, instead concentrating on Susanna's growth into being a little more sure of herself.

As has been said before, Ryder brings a lot to the table, not just being a talented actress, but life research, having spent time in a hospital due to exhaustion(this is why she pulled out of GODFATHER PART III as well). And instead of going for obvious drama, she too just makes Susanna's recovery a gradual and detailed journey, except for those melodramatic scenes. The first third, which seems to be influence by SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, flashes back and forth through time, as if showing Susanna feeling lost and fragmented. The rest of the movie is more linear, but Ryder doesn't make it boring.

Some people have dismissed this as a chick ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, which is the usual knee-jerk response whenever a mostly female cast tackles what is normally done with a mostly male cast. In truth, they're very different movies, primarily because in CUCKOO, we're meant to see the hospital staff, represented by Nurse Ratched, as evil, trying to break down the patients rather than build them up. Here, on the other hand, while we're meant to see the system's shortcomings(in addition to what I said before, the different meanings of "promiscuous" when applied to men and women), the hospital staff is generally seen as trying to do the best they can. The patients may make fun of the doctors(well-played by Jeffrey Tambor and Vanessa Redgrave) and occasionally challenge the nurses(head nurse Whoopi Goldberg gives her best performance in a long time), but there's no real hatred here, except maybe from Lisa.

Angelina Jolie certainly has a flashy role with Lisa, the resident sociopath, but makes her seem real, until the movie betrays her at the end. When she's pushing people's buttons, she's actually quite sly about it, which is a lot more multi-dimensional than some have made it out to be. The rest of the cast playing patients is also good(it was a little heartbreaking seeing Elisabeth Moss playing a burn victim, especially when they show a picture of her as a young girl, where she looks like she did in IMAGINARY CRIMES). But it's Ryder who is the main reason for seeing this fine movie.