Another way of reading the novel

Rating: 7/10 (11 May 2002)

Regardless of all the controversy, I just loved and love Brett Easton Ellis' novel. I thought and think it's a bold, challenging and tremendously original work and not just anyone can fully appreciate all the dark humour and despair beneath the gory surface.
The film adaptation shows the depths of the novel refraining from its cruelty. Even though it boasts some shocking scenes (ie the chainsaw) the nature of the impact is mainly psychological and relies very much on the impressive performance by Christian Bale, once again proving the wonderful actor he is. Rather than being dark and ambiguous with respect to the main character, Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner have chosen to look at him from outside thus exposing his pathetism and twisted sense of reality, therefore avoiding any chance of glamorisation of the character, and the film is constantly mocking his yuppie macho conceit, something the novel left the reader to do him/herself. Also, it deserves to be noted that the film is much more woman-friendly than the novel could possibly ever be, most female characters (including the melancholy Courtney) being sympathetic. There is no scope for mysoginy here.
To sum up, this is a more accesible, much less ambiguous approach to a difficult character. While the novel is fascinating because it constantly pushes you to new limits as a reader, the film becomes a highly witty parody of it all. A bit more of social criticism is missing in this adaptation but however thumbs up to Harron for her feminist way of treating an unbearably ridiculous mysoginist lunatic.