not bad, but not really convincing

Rating: Null/10 (10 October 2000)

I found Girl, Interrupted fairly interesting but ultimately unconvincing and I put this largely down to one thing: the feeling that Winona Ryder's "Susanna" was an observer of the institution in which the film is set rather than a resident.
The opening of the film is composed of an interesting array of incidents of Susanna's life thus far, and jumps around through time between them. As Susanna describes her experience of being "unable to control time" to her doctor, we are clearly supposed to gather that this non-linear progression represents Susanna's experience of her illness. (Although, frankly, I wasn't aware that many people could "control time". I'm sure I can't).
But from this promising beginning nothing develops. After her first dream- (or hallucination-) filled night on the ward, there is no sign whatsoever of Susanna's illness. She spends her time getting to know, and in some cases helping, the other patients but gives the impression more of a journalist doing research than a patient receiving treatment. At one point she becomes depressed by the behaviour of Lisa (the excellent, and much more intriguing Angelina Jolie) and the death of a fellow patient, but even this manifests itself as nothing more than a reluctance to get out of bed. At no point do we get an insight into why she is still there or what she requires treatment for.
Whilst I do grasp that part of the point of the movie is that she was never really all that ill, and was sent to the institution as much for her parent's convenience as for her own mental well-being, she clearly does consider herself to have been ill and to be "better" by the time she leaves. I simply never really noticed any symptoms during most of her stay, from which she could be said to need to recover.