Dir. Roger Avary, 2002, US/Germany, 111 mins
Cast: James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, Ian Somerhalder, Faye Dunaway
It takes a brave man to tackle a Bret Easton Ellis novel, whose subject matter largely deals with disillusioned obsessives on a self-destructive path to oblivion fuelled by drink, drugs and sex. Director Roger Avary (whose writing credits include Pulp Fiction, True Romance and Reservoir Dogs) is one such man.
The Rules of Attraction is Ellis' second novel. This time he chooses a New Hampshire college as his setting, on the opposite side of the country to the lacklustre LA featured in his debut novel Less Than Zero, written when he was just nineteen. Ellis fans will already know this is the liberal arts college that Clay, our protagonist in Less Than Zero, came home from for the holidays. Whilst the story is little more than a repeat of Zero's west side antics in New Hampshire, it is also a far more disturbing journey into the minds of young Americans too stoned to take control of their own lives and too damaged to feel any kind of real emotion.
Set in what was then the present day eighties, Less Than Zero has a strong feeling of disenchantment and endless unfilled space brought about by listlessness. Avary successfully modernises Rules (also set by Ellis in the eighties) by accelerating his characters' actions with speeded up film or jump-cuts, to give their disenchantment a more aggressive 21st Century edge. Instead of eighties nonchalance, Avary creates a suitably claustrophobic new century environment, shooting mostly in close-up with voiced-over narrative - usually during the film's most intimate moments.
Avary has commented that reading The Rules of Attraction at college made him laugh out loud and that he would look up from the book and see one of its characters walk right past him. If there is any appeal to Ellis' writing it is this; his characterisation is first-class and whether you are at college in New Hampshire or Newhaven his anti-heroes will have resonance. Avary clearly understands this from his own experience and his characters are stronger and more vulnerable for it. Moments such as Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon) throwing herself at a boyfriend who doesn't remember her, Paul (Ian Somerhalder) thinking he's on a date with a woman-chasing Sean (James Van Der Beek), or Faye Dunaway and Suzie Kurtz as mothers who drug and dope more than their kids, demonstrate the director's demand for some much needed pathos.
Taking this mediocre tale of debauchery and disenchantment, Avary manages to make a series of depressingly lonely couplings, masturbation and drug taking quite watchable - and even amusing. Using multiple narrative and off-the-wall techniques, he creates diversity in what could otherwise have become an uncut American Pie Uncut. This is a nasty Beverley Hills 90210 and an unsparingly crude Dawson's Creek (despite valiant efforts to be mean and dirty, it's hard to mentally remove James Van Der Beek from his Dawson role). The film's depiction of Lauren losing her virginity, semi-conscious, to a stranger who is sick all over her back as he climaxes, sums up the kind of material Avary is working with.
At the end of the day The Rules of Attraction, like Ellis' other novels, deals with unsavoury subject matter and questionable stereotypes. Youth who should be full of hope and promise are instead drinking and drugging themselves to death so hard their lives have stopped moving forward and have gone into decline - as Avary's frequent film reversal technique suggests. During sex, Ellis' women are unconscious, crazed with lust, or acting out a male porn fantasy. Ellis' men think about sex twenty-four hours a day and usually heighten the experience with violence or detachment. The parties these undergrads attend are either Edge of the World or End of the World. There is no bright Hollywood finale for directors to play with or no great moral message. Ellis' world is dark, brooding and getting darker.
The director reports that Bret Easton Ellis on seeing Rules for the first time congratulated him on making a film that was better than the book. Praise indeed for the handling of some difficult material presented in a fast-paced and shocking, but palatable, way. To decide to tackle such controversial prose is a daunting task but Avary, whilst honouring some of Ellis' greatest prejudices, has come up with a far more exciting and superior assault on the senses.
Rebecca Kemp
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