Lost and Delirious (2001)
A newcomer to a posh girls boarding school discovers that her two senior roommates are lovers.
Director:
Léa PoolStars:
Lost and Delirious is the story of three adolescent girls' first love,
their discovery of sexual passion, and their search for identities. Set
in a posh, private boarding school surrounded by luxuriant, green
forest, Lost and Delirious moves swiftly from academic routine,
homesickness, and girlish silliness to the darker region of lover's
intrigue.
Country:
CanadaLanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
20 September 2001 (Israel) See more »Also Known As:
Pasión prohibida See more »Filming Locations:
Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Québec, CanadaBox Office
Opening Weekend USA:
$41,215, 8 July 2001, Limited ReleaseGross USA:
$302,365, 2 September 2001Company Credits
Production Co:
MOVIE CLIPS (SHORT VERSION OF THE LOVE DRAMA)
"Lost and Delirious" is a hymn to teenage idealism and hormones. It
has been reviewed as a movie about steamy lesbian sex in a girls'
boarding school, which is like reviewing Secretariat on the basis of
what he does in the stable. The truest words in the movie are spoken by
Paulie, the school rebel, when she says she is not a lesbian because her
love rises above mere categories and exists as a transcendent ideal.
Indulge
me while I tell you that as a teenager I was consumed by the novels of
Thomas Wolfe. His autobiographical heroes were filled with a passion to
devour life, to experience everything, to make love to every woman, read
every book in the library. At night he could not sleep, but wandered
the campus, "uttering wild goat cries to the moon." I read every word
Wolfe ever published. Today I find him unreadable--yes, even Look
Homeward, Angel and You Can't Go Home Again . I have outlived that
moment when all life seemed spread before me, all possibilities open to
me, all achievements within my reach. Outlived it, but not forgotten it.
"Lost and Delirious" stirred within me memories of that season in
adolescence when the heart leaps up in passionate idealism--and
inevitably mingles it with sexual desire.
Yes, there is nudity in "Lost and Delirious," and some intimate
moments in the dorm room when the movie recalls the freedoms of the
1970s, before soft-core sex had been replaced by hard-core violence. The
movie would be dishonest if it didn't provide us with visuals to match
the libidos of its two young lovers--the heedless rebel girl Paulie (Piper Perabo) and the cautious rich kid Victoria (Jessica Pare),
who is excited by her schoolgirl affair, but not brave enough to risk
discovery; after all, her parents may not take her to Europe if they
find out.
Paulie and Victoria represent two types familiar from
everyone's high school--the type who acts out, and the type who wants to
get all the right entries under her photo in the yearbook. At reunions
years from now, Paulie will be the one they tell the stories about.
Piper Perabo plays her with wonderful abandon and conviction, and
Jessica Pare's Tory is sweet in her timidity. Perabo has scenes that
would merely seem silly if she weren't able to invest them with such
sincerity. The scene where she stalks into the library in her fencing
gear, for example, and leaps onto a table to declare her love for
Victoria. The scene where she challenges Victoria's new boyfriend to a
duel. The scenes where she identifies with the wounded eagle she tends
in the forest. The way she quotes great love poetry, promising, I will
make me a willow cabin at thy gate. Their school is a vast, beautiful
brick pile (actually Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec). It
seems to have only two faculty members: The headmistress and English
teacher Faye Vaughn (Jackie Burroughs),
who teaches Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" as if she sees herself
as Cleopatra--or Antony. And the math teacher, Eleanor Bannet (Mimi Kuzyk).
Paulie spots Bannet as a woman not quite brave enough to follow "to
thine own self be true," and insolently calls her "Eleanor" in a
classroom. Faye Vaughn, on the other hand, feeds into Paulie's hungers
by being as romantic as she is--although Paulie doesn't always see that.
Also on the staff is Joe Menzies (Graham Greene), a wise old gardener who acts as a Greek chorus, uttering wry epigrams.
The story is told through the eyes of a new girl named Mouse (Mischa Barton),
who is a little slow to catch on that her roommates are sapphic (the
first time she sees them kissing, "I thought they were just practicing
for boys"). In the immortal words of every high school movie--for Mouse,
after this year, things will never be the same again. Of course, after
every year, nothing is ever the same again for anyone, but when you're
16, it seems to be all about you.
When I saw "Lost and Delirious"
at Sundance, I wrote that it was one of the best crafted, most
professional films at the festival. The director, Lea Pool,
creates a lush, thoughtfully framed and composed film; her classical
visual style lends gravitas to this romantic story. It seems important
partly because the movie makes it look important, regarding it with
respect instead of cutting it up into little emotional punchlines.
There is a temptation, I suppose, to try to stand above this
material, to condescend to its eagerness and uncompromising idealism. To
do that is to cave in to the cynicism that infects most modern films.
This is a movie for those who sometimes, in the stillness of the
sleepless night, are so filled with hope and longing that they feel
like--well, like uttering wild goat cries to the moon. You know who you
are. And if you know someone who says, "Let's go to `Scary Movie 2'
instead," that person is not worthy to be your friend.
Footnote:
The movie is being released "unrated," which means it is too poetic,
idealistic and healthfully erotic to fit into the sick categories of the
flywheels at the MPAA. Mature teens are likely to find it inspirational
and moving.
Watch the full movie here
Thanks reading and enjoy watching one of the greatest LAD movies ever.
