Lost and Delirious Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)June 22nd, 2001
LOST AND DELIRIOUS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
Lions Gate Films/ Seville Pictures
Director: Lea Pool
Writer: Susan Swan, (Novel, "The Wives of Bath"), Judith Thompson
Cast: Piper Perabo, Jessica Pare, Mischa Barton, Jackie Burroughs, Graham Greene, Mimi Kuzyk, Luke
Kirby
What goes on at those exclusive, all-girls' boarding schools when the teen students get under the blankets at night with no adult supervision in the rooms? If you've ever rented those tapes to watch in hotels at midnight, you're probably aware. Sort of makes you wonder how some of the rich parents who are socially conservative are willing to send their kids away--I guess that's how much they want their lovely adolescent girls around. "Lost and Delirious," a dramatic and vivid new picture by Lea Pool ("Emporte-moi"), does not try to subvert the notion propagated by "adult" films that while non-coed sleepaway institutions does not create homosexuality, they don't do a heck of a lot to discourage it. But "Lost and Delirious" is as far removed from a porn fest as Rudy Giuliani would like to be from Donna Hanover. The picture, which was featured at the Sundance Festival, is concerned with exploring the nature of adolescence, in particular with what happens when one wiseass but highly intelligent and motivated young woman becomes frustrated as her roommate and sexual partner suddenly begins dating (and mating with) a young man and suggests that her roommate and she become simply friends.
"Lost and Delirious" is told from the point of view of a new student, freshman Mary Bradford (Mischa Barton), who is assigned to a room inhabited by two seniors, Pauline ("Pauly) Oster (Piper Perabo) and Victoria "Tory" Moller (Jessica Pare). Though the three girls come from wealthy backgrounds, they're vulnerable: young Mary because she lost her mother to cancer some years back and has been hustled to the school apparently on the whim of her stepmother; Tory, because she has a father who is socially conservative, a position that will endanger Tory's lesbian relationship; and the brilliant Pauly, whose birth mother gave her up early on for adoption and remains unwilling to meet with her.
While the actions take place from Mary's point of view, this is Pauly's movie and Piper Perabo as Pauline steals every scene she's in. At first "Lost and Delirious" looks like another one of those Sundance movies that feature yuppies moaning about their relationships, dead from the neck up and concerned exclusively with their sexual performance. But Pauline's ability to quote Shakepseare at length, even to solve math problems when called upon though her mind may be elsewhere, is absorbing. Yet while cursing teachers in front of classmates is usually the prerogative of the dumb kids who cannot get attention by academic performance, Pauline's overt hostility toward Faye Vaughn, the headmistress of the school (noted Canadian stage performer Jackie Burroughs) and her math instructor, Eleanor Bannet (Mimi Kuzyk) is informed by her growing inability to hold onto the girl she loves. When Tory finally gets through to Pauly that while she still loves her, she is making the plunge into a heterosexual relationship, the highly strung, brilliant Pauline makes a series of dramatic moves that propel the movie into the kind of Shakespearean tragedy that parallels Faye Vaughn's classroom in English literature.
"Lost and Delirious," filmed in Eastern Quebec, indicates that rich kids may well have problems, perhaps as serious as those suffered by the disadvantaged, that lesbianism during teen years is not necessarily just adolescent experimentation, and that profound changes occur in the lives of people when their hormones are raging and they are most vulnerable. Piper Perabo's performance is stellar. Come to think of it, since I took in the film "The Boys of St. Vincent," I don't think I've seen a bad picture made by French Canadians.
Not Rated. Running time: 100 minutes. (C) 2001 by
Harvey Karten, [email protected]
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