Teen scene

>> Ghost World gets girls right, finally

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

It's hard to believe that Ghost World was written by a man. A sensitive, geek-boy, comic artist (Dan Clowes of Eightball fame), but a man nonetheless. I say this because of the realistic, detailed portrait he has managed to craft of teenage girlhood in the form of recent high school grads Enid and Rebecca, our two sourpuss Ghost World comic characters and movie protagonists. How could co-writer and director Terry Zwigoff (maker of Crumb) possibly go wrong with these anti-Love-Hewitt teens?

Faced with clueless boys, lame parents and criminally lame teachers, their only respite is dying their hair a different colour every week or speaking in snarky one-liners. Oh, and arguing about what it means to be "punk" and hanging out at really bad cafés for hours, spying on weirdos in avoidance of getting a job. What else are smart, suburban girls with developing misanthropic tendencies to do? If you're obsessively close best friends Enid (American Beauty's Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), not much. Enid is better at all this than Rebecca, who gets a job to get an apartment much faster, while Enid prefers channeling all her energies into her weird obsession with the aging collector nerd Seymour (the ever-enchanting Steve Buscemi).

It's satisfying and squirm-inducing to watch Enid hesitate, bluff and stumble her way through her first hard-core crush. At first she pities Seymour's socially retarded, ultra-cynical hermitism, but then it only adds zeal to her seduction strategy when her relationship with Rebecca gets rocky. As the girls struggle to find out who the hell they are, a supporting cast of painfully dorky adults provide excellent diversion. There's Illeana Douglas as a whimsically flaky art teacher, Bob Balaban as Enid's well-meaning, receptive dad and dowdy ex-step-mom Terri Garr.

Though purists may lament the film's deviations from the comic book, the mood and most of the characters remain the same. The setting--a suburban cultural wasteland that mirrors the girls' inner stagnation--makes for a rather slow-moving film. If you can sit back, enjoy the scenery, the touching humour, the deft performances and the clever send-ups of American monoculture, this is one brilliant, meandering ride. Especially, but not exclusively, if you ever used to read Sassy magazine, wear combat boots with mini skirts, listen to three-chord punk rock all day, read comics or hate high school. But I digress.

Ghost World opens Friday, Aug. 17