director/screenwriter
Roger Avary
based on
the novel by
Bret Easton
Ellis
producer
Greg Shapiro
cinematographer
Robert Brinkmann
music
tomandandy
editor
Sharon Rutter
cast
James Van Der Beek (Sean Bateman)
Shannyn Sossamon (Lauren Hynde)
Ian Somerhalder (Paul Denton)
Jessica Biel (Lara Holleran)
Kip Pardue (Victor Johnson)
Kate Bosworth (Kelly)
Thomas Ian Nicholas (Mitchell)
Joel Michaely (Raymond)
Clare Kramer (Candice)
Jay Baruchel (Harry)
Eric Stoltz (Lance Lawson)
Clifton Collins Jr. (Rupert Guest)
Fred Savage (Marc)
Faye Dunaway (Mrs. Eve Denton)
Swoosie Kurtz (Mrs. Mimi Jared)
Russell Sams (Richard 'Dick' Jared)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 104m
u.s.
release: October 11,
2002
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other roger
avary films
reviewed on this website:
- killing
zoe
see also:
- american
psycho
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You will see very few -- probably
no -- movies this year that play with the film medium as joyfully,
and with as much reckless elegance, as The Rules of Attraction.
I want this movie on DVD tomorrow so I can watch it on a loop
over and over; I loved every jagged, unstable minute of it even
when a headache that kicked in about halfway through (not
induced by the movie) forced me to squint through much of the
proceedings. Of course, you need to realize two things going
in: There's no story, and there are no characters you'd find
interesting for more than thirty seconds in real life. That's
par for the course with material that originated from Bret Easton
Ellis, the zombie Dostoyevsky of the Brat Pack. But writer-director
Roger Avary -- like Mary Harron, who worked similar magic with
Ellis' American
Psycho two years ago -- performs a dazzling feat of alchemy
on the base metals of Ellis' unreadable 1987 novel.
The action is largely confined
to debauchery and unrequited yearning, and unfolds mostly on
and around the campus of Camden College, where the education
seems to be solely the sexual variety (and varieties), and lessons
are learned in bedrooms rather than classrooms. But it's not
all lust: mass quantities of drugs and alcohol are consumed before,
after, and during the sex, and occasionally an unselfish human
emotion does peek through the fog before dying of loneliness.
But mainly we're watching Sean (James Van Der Beek), who has
the hots for Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon), who has the hots for
Victor (Kip Pardue) .... Ellis and Avary can expound on the satirical
weight of this stuff all they want, but this is essentially a
postmodern Archie comic -- Sean even has a Jughead in
the form of the bisexual Paul (Ian Somerhalder), who has the
hots for him -- and Avary rightly treats it as such.
I was not among the admirers
of Avary's first film, 1994's self-consciously vicious Killing
Zoe. It was clear to me that Avary had talent (he did
have a hand in writing Pulp
Fiction, after all), but Killing Zoe seemed too,
well, Tarantino-esque; I wondered if Avary had a voice of his
own. Taking off from Ellis' monotone, Avary spreads his wings
and sings. To confuse the Dawson's
Creek fans in the audience, Avary plays what seems like
half the first reel backwards, doubling back to show the same
party three different ways. A split-screen scene between Sean
and Lauren ends with the neatest camera trick I've seen in a
movie since the forced perspective in The
Fellowship of the Ring. Avary also gives us a high-speed
condensed version of Victor's drugs-and-sex-fueled trip through
Europe; the sequence is a mini-essay on the maxim "Brevity
is the soul of wit." On one level, The Rules of Attraction
is brilliant film-geek eye candy, borrowing liberally from the
greats (Kubrick, Scorsese) to tell a story fundamentally not
worth telling.
So why see it? Well, aside
from Avary's brand of rock and roll (by the way, the film has
some of the most diabolically funny music cues ever, ranging
from "Faith" to "Afternoon Delight"), there's
the acting; Van Der Beek is several continents removed from the
Creek here, a lackadaisical sadist who shrugs between sensations,
and Shannyn Sossamon, an empty pixie in most other roles, bruises
and blossoms here as a self-hating virgin whose psyche is as
snarled as her hair. Special mention must also go to Faye Dunaway
and Swoosie Kurtz as out-of-it pill-popping matrons, Clifton
Collins Jr. as a coked-up dealer who uses a certain 12-letter
word as every part of speech, and the drop-dead hilarious Russell
Sams as Paul's gay buddy Richard, who prefers to be called Dick.
Sams' dinner chat with the mortified Dunaway and Kurtz scales
the heights of Jim Carrey-esque mania; it's the film's highlight.
So: masterfully directed, well-acted,
and dead in the water dramatically and emotionally. Is this a
recommendation? Hell, yes: Think of how many movies lately have
been badly directed and acted and dramatically/emotionally
stunted. This one has Eric Stoltz as a leering Irish professor,
and Fred Savage tootling on his clarinet while riding a heroin
high, and a student walking backwards through the snow, erasing
his footprints as the snow flutters upward. And by example and
without editorializing, The Rules of Attraction also manages
to comment on the follies of excess and instant gratification.
Speaking of the latter: I'll have that DVD now, please.
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