Roger Avary's 'Rules of Attraction', based on the novel by Brett Easton Ellis ('Less than Zero', 'American Psycho'), is a kaleidoscopic tale of love's merry-go-round, sexual surrogacy and the crisis of identity. Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon), Paul (Ian Somerhalder) and Sean (James van der Beek) all half-heartedly pursue disappointing erotic encounters at a college winter party with someone other than the person they love. Rewind a little, and you get a multi-faceted sequence of episodes revealing these characters' inscrutable, shifting appetites and their blindness to the desires of others, leading from the previous spring to that final winter's night of the soul.
Back in the day, Avary used to work in a video store with one Quentin Tarantino, and collaborated with him on the scripts for 'True Romance' and 'Pulp Fiction'. In an early scene of 'Rules of Attraction', Avary pays a double-edged homage to his one-time colleague, having a sleazy NYU film student/amateur pornographer (Eric Szmanda) drone on about the Tarantino oeuvre in a (successful) attempt to chat up Lauren - certainly Avary's deft handling of multiple storylines, chronological ruptures and rapid moodswings is reminiscent of Tarantino at the very peak of his craft.
In fact, not since 'Fight Club' has there been a film so relentlessly inventive and richly exuberant in its modes of narrative. If you like films that tell their stories straight and conceal their art, then avoid this at all costs; but if you're a fan of flashbacks, split screens, rapid montages, multiple voice-overs, and all the other varieties of directorial intervention, then this is the film for you. With 'Rules of Attraction', as with a good joke, it's all in the way it's told, and Avary's delivery is flawless.
The film is by turns comic and tragic, romantic and cynical, and races by at a delirious pace. Along the way are plenty of priceless moments, like a cameo by the childstar of TV's 'The Wonder Years', Fred Savage, here all grown up and injecting heroin between his toes before exclaiming 'Oh my god, I can feel my dick!'; or college lecturer Lance (Eric Stoltz) smugly following Bill Clinton's example by telling student Lauren he just wants oral because he's worried about losing his tenure; or Victor (Kip Pardue) giving a turbo-charged account of his travels through Europe, with his progress measured as much by drugs and sex as by geographical locations. And there is a suicide more moving than anything in 'The Hours'.
You would do well to observe the 'Rules of Attraction'. Nothing short of a minor masterpiece.
Back in the day, Avary used to work in a video store with one Quentin Tarantino, and collaborated with him on the scripts for 'True Romance' and 'Pulp Fiction'. In an early scene of 'Rules of Attraction', Avary pays a double-edged homage to his one-time colleague, having a sleazy NYU film student/amateur pornographer (Eric Szmanda) drone on about the Tarantino oeuvre in a (successful) attempt to chat up Lauren - certainly Avary's deft handling of multiple storylines, chronological ruptures and rapid moodswings is reminiscent of Tarantino at the very peak of his craft.
In fact, not since 'Fight Club' has there been a film so relentlessly inventive and richly exuberant in its modes of narrative. If you like films that tell their stories straight and conceal their art, then avoid this at all costs; but if you're a fan of flashbacks, split screens, rapid montages, multiple voice-overs, and all the other varieties of directorial intervention, then this is the film for you. With 'Rules of Attraction', as with a good joke, it's all in the way it's told, and Avary's delivery is flawless.
The film is by turns comic and tragic, romantic and cynical, and races by at a delirious pace. Along the way are plenty of priceless moments, like a cameo by the childstar of TV's 'The Wonder Years', Fred Savage, here all grown up and injecting heroin between his toes before exclaiming 'Oh my god, I can feel my dick!'; or college lecturer Lance (Eric Stoltz) smugly following Bill Clinton's example by telling student Lauren he just wants oral because he's worried about losing his tenure; or Victor (Kip Pardue) giving a turbo-charged account of his travels through Europe, with his progress measured as much by drugs and sex as by geographical locations. And there is a suicide more moving than anything in 'The Hours'.
You would do well to observe the 'Rules of Attraction'. Nothing short of a minor masterpiece.