An extreme departure from the book, but an interesting study of actresses

Rating: 6/10 (24 January 2000)

I've read several opinions (here and in magazines) that the movie stuck quite closely to the book, and I'm wondering if I read the same book. The movie seemed only to take shreds of the book, and add a lot of wild and outrageous adventures that seem to be attempting to make mental illness look like fun....which is odd, because it is not. I was disappointed to see that the film offers the idea that Susanna is merely spoiled and self-indulgent and not actually mentally disturbed. Had the film included some sections of the book (like when she claws through the skin on her hand because she's convinced that she has no bones), that theory would have been impossible. The staging and camerawork seemed bland and formulaic, as did the script, providing a fairly sugar coated view of mental illness, until the scene in the basement of the hospital, towards the end of the film.
Angelina Jolie's performance, at first, seemed to fit the wild, free and easy depiction of mental illness, but in the last half of the movie, she began to make her character increasingly cruel, reminding the audience that she IS a sociopath, and not just a "free spirit, unjustly imprisoned". I got the impression that Winona Ryder could have acted this part in her sleep, and did so, until the bathtub scene with Whoopi Goldberg, where she seemed to break out of the naive waif characterization, and finally show some signs of life. The supporting actresses did well, as did Jeffrey Tambor in a role that is far from his usual comedy. Overall, this film can't be seen as a serious study of mental illness until close to the end, when things get intense, and you realize that these girls really are ill. I do feel that if the movie had stuck more closely to the book, it may not have been as fun, but it certainly would have been more realistic.