by MATTHEW HAYS

A book like The Rules of Attraction, one of Bret Easton Ellis’s quintessentially ’80s novels, could so easily have been mishandled on its way to the big screen. It’s a filmmaking challenge, for sure. A book this unusual, a book this coveted by Ellis freaks.

The good news is, fans of Bret Easton Ellis will not be disappointed in the latest page-to-screen adaptation of Ellis’s work. Writer-director Roger Avary (an Oscar winner for his Pulp Fiction co-screenwriter credit) has gone out of his way to shred the screenwriting and filmmaking rule books, matching the original work’s ingenuity and playfulness.

The result is an invigorating, boisterous look at a group of wildly cynical and libidinous college brats. Avary’s first victory was his cool-headed handle on the casting. Dawson Creek’s James Van Der Beek is perfectly sexy as the lead, the emotionally shallow coitus athlete Sean Bateman (brother of Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of American Psycho). Ian Somerhalder is hilarious as the predatory gay man stuck in a straight dorm, apparently attracted to rejection. Eric Stoltz is a prof who jumps the bones of his female students whenever possible. And Faye Dunaway and Swoosie Kurtz play a couple of drugged-up moms who supply some answers as to why the younger generation in the film is so screwed up.

Key to Avary’s vision is a sense of time; he manages to set this very ’80s bit of work contemporarily, while still making it all seem very nostalgic. His playful use of time—which will certainly remind fans of Pulp Fiction—has a main party sequence occurring first, then rewinding us back to the events leading up to it. Avary rewinds quite literally—and effectively—having the film run backwards as we segue back to where it all began. It’s a jarring gimmick, droll while bordering on abrasive.

Avary, who penned this adaptation, wallows in the sheer shallowness of the work’s characters. They’re liberal-arts college types, typically fearless of the future, with little or no regard for the locals (“townies”) and every regard for getting shagged. When love enters into it, it’s the kind of flighty infatuation that’s questionable as deeply held conviction.

By turn, Avary takes us through every one of Ellis’s characters, showing us folk who are just as often unlikable as pleasing. This is a raucous two hours, an anti-John Hughes movie that shows us raunch, debauchery and even some tragedy, in a blitz made by someone who looks to be suffering from attention deficit disorder. Ellis, no doubt, is pleased. :

The Rules of Attraction opens Friday, Oct. 11

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