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Girl, Interrupted Customer Reviews (46 - 48 of 57 Reviews)

Ambivalent Little Women
This drama focuses the coming-of-age story of Susana (Winona Ryder), a young girl who`s in the last years of adolescence and still doesn`t know what to do in the future. Due to a suicide attempt, she is sent to a psychiatric institution where she must overcome her mental problems, particularly her "borderline personality". The thing is, Susana isn`t really that mad or insane, just a tad confused and lost. When she meets her mates in the institution, she starts questioning the world around her and the frontier between sanity and madness. Susana soon develops a tight friendship with Lisa (Angelina Jolie), a clever yet unstable and sometimes ferocious girl.

Director James Mangold delivers an intriguing story here, giving a glimpse into the sixties zeitgeist and the generational problems of a youth without strong references and guidance. The plot is not all that original, as it basically combines "One Flew Over the Cuckoos` Nest" and "Little Women", but the acting, dialogue and score make up for some of the plot`s weaknesses.

"Girl, Interrupted" is a fine drama about becoming an adult and starting to see the world under a new perspective, which indeed can lead to an "ambivalent" state as Susana discovers here. It`s not as risky as it should, since some major problems are handled with a light touch, but overall it has enough depth and complexity to become a meaningful effort.

True, the movie has some unecessary cheesy and melodramatic scenes at parts, approaching predictable Hollywood fluff, but fortunately the good moments still outweight the bad ones. At least it`s much better than Mangold`s latest achievements, the uninteresting "Kate and Leopold" and "Identity", and the two lead actresses are stunning and credible (the rest of the cast is convincing as well, even if the characters lack proper development).
"Girl, Interrupted" deserves a watch, since it rises above the mediocre, uninspired and uselless teen flicks around.

Worthwile and compelling.

Mental Health Memoir
Winona Ryder stars as Susanna Kaysen, whose voluntary stint in a mental hospital in the late 60's was the basis of her memoir on which the film is based. Susanna enters Claymore after she tries to commit suicide by taking a whole bottle of aspirin. She is placed on a floor with people she deems to be actually crazy. Her roommate, Georgina is a pathological liar while other residents include a girl who burned herself to disfiguration, an anorexic, and Linda, a sociopath. Linda is played by Angelina Jolie with manic fervor. She chews up every scene she's in and is a commanding presence. As Susanna goes through a year and half of therapy, she starts off as rebellious and skeptical of her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, but then comes to grips with her own fears and problems. Vanessa Redgrave and Jeffrey Tambor play psychiatrists and Whoopi Goldberg is a nurse on Susanna's floor. While Ms. Jolie scored a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role, it is Ms. Ryder who holds this film together. Her understated performance perfectly captures the confusion that the real Susanna must have been going through. Girl, Interrupted has a powerful message, but is a bit too long and drags in places.

Fine performances mark a fine film.
I watched "Girl, Interrupted" with a friend of mine in west Los Angeles in a theater full of college to middle-aged women. Honestly, folks, this is Winona Ryder's best performance to date, although it might not be immediately obvious because of the tremendous subtlety in her acting. Sure, Angelina Jolie is electrifying, but in obvious ways since her role was clearly the flashier of the two. Despite rumors that they didn't get along too well during the shoot, Ryder and Jolie work very well together onscreen, and the supporting cast is stellar, particularly Clea DuVall (Georgina) and Brittany Murphy (Daisy). There are a few scenes in this movie that present some of Ryder's very best acting of all of her films.

Director James Mangold (Heavy, Cop Land) did a fine job avoiding cheap sentimentality, and I was impressed with his fluid adaptation of a very disjointed and unconventional narrative work. My one complaint is that the film wasn't as gritty or as emotionally resonant as I would have liked, so I walked out of the theater feeling more impressed with the performances than impacted by the story. Still, for any Winona Ryder fan, this movie--with its 2 hours full of close-ups of Ryder's hauntingly beautiful face--is an absolute dream. Multiple layers of muted anguish are registered in Ryder's expressive eyes, and her most powerful acting in this film comes out through her subtle facial expressions rather than any spoken words. "Girl, Interrupted" is not a disappointment by any means. If anything, it has strengthened my respect for Winona Ryder as an actor.

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