Pathology in pink

>> Girl, Interrupted is saner than expected

by JOANNE LATIMER

In 1967, Suzanna Kaysen signed herself into a psychiatric institution and spent one year discovering how sane she was. Based on her best-selling memoirs, Girl, Interrupted is a highly watchable, if uneven, story about friendship inside a loony bin. There are wacked-out inmates, obtuse parents, draft-dodging boyfriends and everything else you need for a good girlhood story about being misunderstood during the sexual revolution.

Winona Ryder may play Kaysen, but nobody would confuse Angelina Jolie for anything less than a co-star. She plays Lisa, the ward's wildcard--the sexpot whose special brand of mental freedom seems to make her better than everyone else. She quotes Dorothy Parker poems about suicide, then paints people's toenails to lift their spirits.

Lisa is such a draw that she threatens to capsize the entire film at any minute, making the premise too simple: only crazy people are sane, while you normal folks are just boring. How many times have we seen that on screen? How many times have we been asked to conclude that clever nuts, as played by attractive movie stars, are more enlightened? That they have some special angle on Truth? Loosen up, they advise, go with your instincts.

Girl, Interrupted makes this easy to swallow because it offers no counter-argument for the first 90 minutes. Lisa is running the joint. The nurses and doctors aren't necessarily evil, but they aren't very helpful. The film has to rehabilitate Kaysen, who isn't very crazy in the first place, and then decide what to do with Lisa. Director James Mangold (Heavy, Cop Land) can't go all Cuckoo's Nest here, because Kaysen's memoirs dictate that she finds "help" within the system. Whoopi Goldberg and Vanessa Redgrave (Dr. Wick), as the grown-up females in the film, are so unflappable and grounded that there's no chance of a credible revolution at Claymoore Hospital.

"You're a lazy and self-indulged girl," diagnoses Goldberg, after throwing Ryder in a tub of cold water. This scene is more of a breakthrough therapy session than an instance of abuse at the hands of a mean orderly.

So what will Mangold do for an ending if all the rebelling is over? Thankfully, he doesn't let Lisa run wild and completely ruin his film. Kaysen's take on Lisa shifts and that makes Girl, Interrupted a more interesting film than it promised to be. :

Girl, Interrupted opens Friday, Jan. 14