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Lost and Delirious

Lost and Delirious

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Perabo delivers a knockout performance!
Review: I had only seen Piper Perabo in "Coyote Ugly" before I saw this film, and I was not expecting much from her before I saw "Lost and Delirious". I was very suprised at her amazing acting talents, and this was not an easy role. The movie follows a teen named Mary/Mouse, who is sent to an all-girl boarding school where she rooms with two lovers names Paulie(Perabo) and Tori. As the movie progresses, the three girls become very close friends, but all is brought to chaos when Paulie and Tori are discovered to be lovers. Immediately Tori pushes Paulie away, driving Paulie to drastic measures and causing her to go crazy. I assure you, you will not be dissapointed with this film. The acting, plot, and cinematography is outstanding! I definately reccomend you go buy or rent this film as soon as possible.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Had high intentions, but fell short...
Review: The movie, begining with the quiet narration of "Mouse" and ending with symbolic flight of the "predator bird," really had the best intentions. Unlike most "sapphic movies," it didn't seem like the story of two women in love (and the steamy scenes they make) was the selling point. The director tried through the use of symbolism and metaphors, to illustrate a Universal doomed love. But unfortunately, a lot of those symbols and metaphors were much too heavy-handed. To me, many of the scenes were much too melodramatic, some even making me cringe and turn my head. Although "sad" is what the excellent cast was pushing for, "sappy" is really what I through the director's point of view. This movie just had the best intentions, but alas, has fallen short.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Almost Shakespearean!
Review: There are many fine reviews here. Therefore, forgive me as I add these words. If your passions awakened at a boarding school, this story will painfully remind you through its careful attention to detail. Every once in a while technical ability (fine writing, fine acting, fine directing) rises to a level when you no longer notice the technique and like beautiful music come to live the story as it is told. This is just such a film. Not a 'coming out' story, this movie speaks to our unruly passions and how they might soar above our mortal lives.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Gorgeous movie
Review: Okay, toss aside the Peter Pan reference that surfaces real quick- that'd be enough for me. But it's a great movie, very true, very real, very romantic. It's easy to get into all the main characters' heads at some point or another, and I found myself extremely emotionally involved in the events leading up to the climax. Love it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent Tale of Love Destroyed by Fear.
Review: Mary: "How much does it matter what other people think?"

Joe: "It depends on how much they're paying you, I guess?...How much are they paying you?"

Lea Pool's decadent tale of a love unlike any other is a humorous, passionate, and tragic statement on image and the lengths one will go to in order to uphold a facade created out of fear. The language is real, interesting, and sharp. The acting is superb. Piper Perabo is truly a force to be reckoned with as the desperate Pauline. The woman mesmerized me. This was a role with substance, unlike the frat-boy fodder that was "Coyote Ugly." I hope more offers for roles such as this come to her. She is amazingly talented if given the challenge.

Desperation runs deep among the three main girls; albeit in different situations, yet they all yearn for the same peace: to love and be loved unconditionally. An all-girls school is definitely the place to showcase this need. One particularly humorous line comes from Tori near the beginning of the film. While taking Mary to their room, she tells her about the food on campus, stating "we mostly save up our allowances and order pizza or Chinese, and, you know, the anorexics just eat erasers." Prior to experiencing the desperation of losing love among the three girls, we experience, from a distance, the desperation of women everywhere: the deeply-rooted desire to be desirable, to be wanted, to be valued as someone, without the burdens of who we are on the outside. From the outside, Pauline and Victoria are two good-looking girls who go to a boarding school. Inside, they are two desolate souls being pulled from what they know to be true. The cruel world that they reside in will never allow them to be as one.

Freud would say this is an inevitable recipe for madness, yet he would justify that by stating that it is simply because of society forcing sexual repression upon Pauline and Victoria. This might be true, but as Pauline passionately tells Mary, "I AM NOT A LESBIAN! I AM PAULINE IN LOVE WITH VICTORIA!" She is a soul in love with another. No gender, no face, no creed. Just one belonging to the other. Forever.

Pauline attacks her desperation with conformity, something quite unusual for her. This proves futile and the facade remains, dancing away into a new life without her. We can all identify with Pauline's desire for love without obligation, without a cost to who we really are. Sometimes the desire comes to fruition, and sometimes not. We can only hope for the former, and truly understand that the one and only definitive, eternal source of unconditional love is inside ourselves. With that, we will always be able to fly to our own undying glory.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pay attention
Review: All of you who said "I am a lesbian, so I can comment on this movie honestly," or said that this movie is "anti-gay" weren't paying attention. Paulie isn't a "lesbian" (whatever the hell that is), she is a person in love. While the script isn't full-tilt perfect, and yes, it is Canadian so the cinematagrophy is very TV-esque (haven't you ever watched any other Canadian films?), Piper's knock out performance is worth it alone, and the girl who plays Mouse (and also plays a girl in love with a girl on the excellent TV series Once and Again) deserves credit just for the amazing projects she's been associated with in just the first few years of her carrear. This is a good film for all you hopeless romantics out there with art-sy hearts who typically experience heartbreak like it's the end of the world and not just a broken contract.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great Film From Our Neighbor to the North
Review: So great that I say we all forgive and forget Piper for being in that stupid 2 hour shampoo commercial- Coyote Ugly. This is a gripping film and a hypnotic love story between two young women. There are some really cool scenes in here too- like one involving the song "Add It up" by the Violent Femmes and a developing bond between a young girl and a wild baby falcon later in the film. Not to mention some serious rapture between the two school girls that will make your jaw drop.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The soul of the book lost and delirious indeed
Review: The soul of the book lost and delirious indeed
I'll say it up front. If I hadn't read 'The Wives of Bath' (Susan Swan), on which this film is loosely based, I would have enjoyed it much more. Set in an all-girls' boarding school, the story belongs to Mary Beatrice 'Mouse' Bradford (Mischa Barton, 'the Sixth Sense'), transferred mid-semester and introduced into the lives of Paulie (Piper Perabo, 'Coyote Ugly') and Tory (Jessica Pare), best friends who are soon discovered to be lovers.
The very heart of Paulie's hatred of her own gender and desperation to find some way-no matter how extreme-to make her love for passion for Tory acceptable, and the journey she and Mouse take together, are almost completely done away with. Tory is no longer gentle. She has been transformed into the streoetypical "slut" (newcomer Pare is passable in the role, helped along by Perabo's ferocity) And the plot twists involving Tory's romantic relationships are erased completely, leaving much of this stirring novel flattened. Instead, a falcon metaphor is brought in to repeatedly bash us over the head with, a lot of Shakespeare is bandied about, and the ending, along with much of the original plot, is a new creation far less satisfying than Swan's creation. Mouse is no longer enigmatic and quiet; she's exposition in a kilt, and Mischa Barton's dull-voiced, empty-eyed performance makes this even more painfully obvious.
But despite flaws both from the perspective of a fan of the novel and the ideas that are just plain irritating (Paulie=untamed predator. *We get it.*), the love and passion at the center of the story are still there. Perabo delivers a gut-wrenching, honest, fully un-self conscious performance, genuine emotions and furious passion bleeding through her voice and every movement. Her own dignity is perfectly visible during her love scenes, which she handles with delicacy and tenderness, but she is unafraid and completely raw throughout the entire film.
Love is not limited between genders, races, age or religion. Paulie states it perfectly when she explains in frustration: '(), "I'm Paulie in love with Tory." Through Paulie's eyes, we see beauty, friendship, trust and devotion from new, previously undiscovered angles, and we see betrayal and escape. I credit more of this to Perabo's abilities than I do the inconsistant screenplay.
It's worth seeing, I'll give it that much, but it doesn't present any oppertunity for the viewer to ponder its motives. The film's story presents its point, but doesn't allow us to take anything away from it besides its ideas. Swan's novel, however, presents us with a complicated maze of confusion, ignorance, sadness and rage, and lets us decide what impressions her story is intended to leave behind. The bewildering burst of confusion's psychadelic colors and soft, bittersweet tones of anger are left behind for softcore girl-on-girl action. It isn't a bad film, it's simply an unnecessary one. It doesn't shame the novel, but it oversimplifies it to the point of being its own, far less intriguing, story. Go read the book. You'll forget the film within six months, but 'The Wives of Bath' will haunt you for years after you finish it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Experiencing Piper
Review: Piper Perabo shows why she is a brilliant young actress with many wonderful performances ahead of her. The rest of the acting is suspect, but the love story is deep and intense. The movie, also, is a good way for anyone to observe the origins of the destructive bigoted behavior that our "free" society here in America is still plagued with, to this very moment.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Mesmerizing... but where can i find the OST?
Review: I've just watched it tonight and the film was one of the feature films of the HK International Film Festival. It is marvellous! I always love Canadian movies esp Atom Egoyan's movies like The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica & Felicia's Journey. Lost and Delirious further proves that I can never go wrong with movies made by any Canadian film-makers. However, I'm frustrated that I've been searching for the OST for the whole night in HMV and on the net but to my surprise, I COULDN'T find it!!! Can anyone tell me where I can purchase such a perfect soundtrack by Yves Chamberland or if the OST has ever been released? I really wanna get it! I'm sure I won't be able to fall asleep tonight 'cause I thought I could get the OST right after I watched the movie but now it seems that I might not be able to get the OST forever as it's never been released!


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