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I need a woman, age 18 to 21, creative, with an artistic bent. The reason I note this here rather than in a personal ad is that she would be helpful in understanding Winona Ryder's new movie (which the waifish actress, searching for a fresh dramatic challenge, executive produced). It's the true account of Susanna Kaysen, who after graduation from high school in 1968 was coerced by her clueless parents to check herself and her French cigarettes into a New England psychiatric residence merely because she was a little confused.
See, while arty sorts of either gender share the same kind of conflicting inner voices, especially during the post-prep years, women's neuroses seem more complex, more easily influenced by altering any ingredient of environment or personality. If women tilt a bit askew, they come across as crazy; men similarly afflicted just look stupid. So when everybody thinks Susanna's flights of fancy, an affair with an older, married man, and lack of conventional ambition are evidence of insanity, she begins to agree.
Small wonder, since in her first day of commitment she's topped of with pills to make her sleepy and compliant, then promptly wakened every hour to make sure she's hasn't run away. When perpetually escaping, sociopathic Lisa (Angelina Jolie) returns to the ward from a brief jaunt, looking at once deathly and voluptuous (for a high-priced institution, the place apparently doesn't have any combs or Chapstik), they and their fellow campers settle into a comfortable routine somewhat like an alternative indoor summer retreat -- One Flew Over the Slumber Party -- punctuated by sessions with analysts to whom "borderline personality disorder" is synonymous with "youth." Some of the other patients do have much more serious problems, but this isn't prison or a state-run institution, so nobody gets beaten, Whoopi Goldberg gently exhorts everyone to get their act together, and eventually Susanna, at least, is pronounced better and leaves.
But what happened? Was she really unhinged, or was she reveling in a female-specific mode that to men -- and 1960s doctors whose jolt-and-medicate tactics were only slightly removed from ancient Peruvian brain surgery with stone axes -- mimics insanity?
Girl, Interrupted is reasonably well-acted, I guess (they are acting, right?), but left me feeling a little excluded. There's not much plot, and what there is comes to a rather abrupt resolution. But then, since it's based on actual life, which rarely lays out like a movie, maybe it was just too real to enjoy. C
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