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Fatal 'Attraction'
The Rules of Attraction, lacking in morality or point of view, hangs its hopes merely on outrage.
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 10, 2002
[Photo: Lions Gate Films]
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James Van Der Beek and Clifton Collins Jr. star in The Rules of Attraction
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How ironic that a film titled The Rules of Attraction should be so repulsive. The movie revels in its depravity, making no salient or satirical comments about its constant barrage of pharmaceutical excesses, worthless sexuality and dead-end immorality. Not since American Psycho has a film contained so much useless, numbing sin for no purpose other than sick titillation.
Like American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction is based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, whose dire outlook on life must have seemed revelatory to someone in the 1980s. The rest of us just supposed he needed professional help. Ellis writes like a child infatuated with bowel movements, plunging into subjects that should be flushed away. You won't find another film as easy to dislike in this or many other years.
Ellis found a kinky, kindred spirit in writer-director Roger Avary, who rode Quentin Tarantino's coattails to an Oscar for the Pulp Fiction screenplay, made a lousy rip-off called Killing Zoe then disappeared from the scene until, sadly, now. Avary pulls out all the stops -- split-screen effects, rewind mechanics and intersecting narratives -- in an effort to disguise swill as high art. Although some tricks are impressive, viewers can sense the desperation of a failing artist clutching his last chance to matter, even through the passing interest of outrage.
The movie centers around Camden College in the mid 1980s when AIDS hasn't scared the debauchery out of anyone. The story begins at the End of the World Party at the school year's end then flashes back to the orgies, drug deals and cruel duplicity preceding it. We're introduced to three central, unappealing characters making up a strange love triangle.
Lauren Hynde (Shannyn Sossamon) is "technically" a virgin although not for long. She winds up drugged by a film student who records her being raped by a guy who vomits on her during the act (Avary conscientiously runs the regurgitation scene in reverse a couple of times). Sean Bateman -- brother of Ellis' American Psycho killer -- is played by James Van Der Beek in a glowering departure from his nice guy on Dawson's Creek. He's a manipulator seducing a co-ed, then marveling during sex that it's the first time he can remember doing it without being drunk or high. Paul Denton (Ian Somerhalder) is the kind of gay predator bigots warn about, urging any male striking his fancy to engage in sex.
Lauren and Paul each want Sean while Sean wants anything that moves in a skirt. That's the thin plot line connecting an episodic array of meaningless characters showing their ugly side. There isn't a single redeeming trait in any of them and it's evidence of Ellis' nihilism that the only sympathetic character winds up slashing her wrists in a bathtub. Theaters should install showers for moviegoers.
The Rules of Attraction turns all women into victims or, in the case of a bizarre detour into Paul's home life, drunken shrews played by Faye Dunaway and Swoosie Kurtz. Gays are bashable stereotypes and straight males are chemically imbalanced animals in heat. There's a message in there somewhere about the emptiness of such actions yet Avary is too concerned with making trash look cool for any moral to come through. This is, hands down, the worst, most depressing time I've spent in a movie theater all year.
The Rules of Attraction
- Grade: F
- Director: Roger Avary
- Cast: James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, Ian Somerhalder, Jessica Biel, Clifton Collins Jr., Kip Pardue, Kate Bosworth, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Fred Savage, Eric Stoltz, Faye Dunaway, Swoosie Kurtz
- Screenplay: Roger Avary, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis
- Rating: R; graphic sexuality and drug abuse, harsh profanity, nudity and relentless depravity
- Running time: 110 min.
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