Lesbian love affairs, from luscious lip locks to real relationships, are all the rage these days, especially on television.
But leave it to someone as sensitive, smart and mature as Quebec filmmaker Lea Pool to do a film on the subject that has integrity and class. The film is Lost And Delirious.
Based on Susan Swan's novel The Wives Of Bath, Lost And Delirious also marks the Swiss-born Pool's English-language film debut after two decades of working primarily in French in stunning work such as Emporte-Moi.
Lost And Delirious, a romantic tragedy, made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival. That's not surprising. It is a coming-of-age saga set in an all-girls school somewhere in the calm forested outback of either Ontario or Quebec.
So the fresh-scrubbed glow of youth envelops the screen. That in turn means that the most simple and even innocent moments can be naively magnified into cataclysmic events, because youth lacks the perspective that experience brings. That lets the story arc from playfulness to tragedy.
The movie also looks beautiful, and, with its revealing but non-explicit sex scenes, it's sensual without being salacious.
Lost And Delirious also boasts a blistering performance by emerging American star Piper Perabo.
Her fire is fueled by the more subdued but still effective acting turns by Jessica Pare (Stardom) and Mischa Barton (The Sixth Sense), as well as a quirky support ensemble that includes Jackie Burroughs and Graham Greene.
Barton is the narrator and the eyes for the audience. "I felt like a tiny grey mouse heading straight for the mouth of a cat," she tells us as she arrives at the upscale school and bunks in with the characters played by Perabo and Pare.
Quickly, our 'tiny grey mouse' discovers the cats are playing -- with each other. Perabo and Pare have a hot but secret love affair going. The movie traces that relationship through its rocky evolution, propelling all the main characters towards a crisis and its near-mythic resolution.
Along the way, there is the confusion of boy visits, parents, spying, malicious gossip, doubts and confusion. Perabo, a fiesty loner, also befriends an injured wild hawk and nurses it back to health as a symbol of her own quest for freedom.
Absurdly, Pool chose a Harris' hawk as Perabo's companion. It is a species of the U.S. southwest, not Ontario-Quebec, although it is used in falconeering. Without an explanation, the sequence seems contrived and fake.
The film, adapted for the screen by Judith Thompson, has other lapses, such as awkward dialogue at key moments and an ending that seems too new-agey. Nevertheless, this is still a Lea Pool movie and she brings an intangible feeling of intelligence to everything she does, even in English.
(This film is rated AA)
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