The mental affliction known as Borderline Personality Disorder is described as "uncertainty about self-image, long-term goals, types of friends or lovers to have and which values to adopt."
It's also an apt description of a condition commonly known as "adolescence."
Still, the malady is diagnosed in the confused suburban teen Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) after a suicide attempt in which she chases a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. "I had a headache," she tells her doctor, who promptly has her committed to a mental institution called Claymore Hospital.
It may be Susanna's condition is exacerbated by the time in which she lives. The year is 1967, and the world has been turned topsy-turvy by revolutions, political, sexual and pharmaceutical.
It's a strange, difficult time in which to grow up. But in Claymore, Susanna experiences true kinship with fellow inmates, including her roommate Georgina (Clea Duvall), a pathological liar obsessed with The Wizard of Oz, Polly (Elisabeth Moss), a good-hearted burn victim, and Daisy (Brittany Murphy), a troubled daddy's girl addicted to rotisserie chicken and laxatives.
The charismatic queen of the ward is Lisa (Angelina Jolie), an intelligent, charismatic beauty whose charm barely disguises a cruel sociopathic nature.
Based on Kaysen's memoir of the same name, Girl, Interrupted has been inaccurately described as a feminine variation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Not quite. Though Susanna is hostile to her overseers, the authority figures here are benevolent, from the wise, seen-it-all head nurse (Whoopi Goldberg) to the insightful chief psychiatrist (Vanessa Redgrave).
In fact, the irony of the story is that the hospital becomes something of a refuge for Susanna, so much so that she declines an invitation from her draft-dodger boyfriend (Jared Leto) to join him in an escape to Canada. She is, after all, in the company of troubled kindred spirits. This is particularly evident in a scene in which Susanna is confronted by an angry friend (Mary Kay Place) during a day trip to an ice cream parlour, and her fellow inmates gleefully rise to her defence.
It's a potentially seductive environment, which prompts Goldberg's nurse to advise Susanna: "Do not drop anchor here."
Directed by James Mangold, the film avoids the pitfalls of other psychiatric movies, which often tend to build stereotypical characters around their maladies: the nymphomaniac, the schizophrenic, the kleptomaniac, etc. Each is accorded humanity, particularly Murphy's tragic Daisy.
But the film belongs to Ryder and Jolie, who create an interesting dynamic of strength and weakness, courage and cowardice, sensitivity and callousness. The two are magnetically drawn together because, between them, they have the qualities of a functional human being.
Jolie is pretty much born to the role of Lisa, a voluptuously wicked bad girl with a buried streak of self-loathing. No doubt, she will overshadow the oft-maligned Ryder, but Winona holds her own. Her Susanna is a heartfelt portrait of an inarticulate young woman struggling to find her own voice.
(This film is rated "AA")
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