Starring Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg, Clea Duvall, Jared Leto, Brittany Murphy, Elizabeth Moss, Jeffrey Tambor, Vanessa Redgrave. Directed by James Mangold. Susanna Kayson (Ryder) is just graduating high school, but has no interest in university or much of anything else. She has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She is often depressed and getting headaches, and recently downed a bottle of Aspirin washed down with vodka to get rid of the pain. Her parents figure the only way to help her after her recent suicide attempts is to place her in a local, well-regarded psychiatric hospital. She arrives by cab and is greeted by a nurse (Goldberg) who introduces her to various "inmates" (Duvall, Murphy, Moss). Soon a very cocky and noisy young woman is dragged into the hospital by police. Lisa (Jolie) has been in and out (after escaping) of the institution for eight years, and is both feared and looked up to by the other women. She leads the young women in sneaking out of their rooms at night, encourages them to avoid taking their medication, and breaks into the office of their shrink (Tambor) to check out their records. Susanna for the first few months feels she's making no progress, and her shrink and a highly regarded therapist (Redgrave) have no clue what they're doing in trying to analyse her. Events begin to change when Lisa convinces Susanna to escape. They check out the apartment of a recently released patient on their way to Florida. She kills herself while they're there, and Susanna finds the body. The devastated reactions of her shrink and the rest of the staff, plus her upclose experience with death puts things in a new light for Susanna, and she begins to co-operate with hospital personnel, and starts working towards getting better. But things don't go entirely smoothly. Set in the late 1960's, the movie is based on the real-life story of Susanna Kayson's own year-long stay in a mental institution for just over a year. Described by some as a female version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, it is not. Where that film was an indictment of the mental hospital system, Girl, Interrupted is far more even-handed. At first, Susanna is suspicious of her doctors and nurses, and feels they are doing nothing for her or the other patients. But after her friend's suicide she begins to see her two therapists and head nurse Goldberg do care, and wish to help her. The only significant negative lies in Lisa's claim that the staff used electric shock therapy on her, and we're not entirely sure if she's lying or not. The film instead deals with the question of what constitutes "crazy" or "sane", and that crazy is not always a distinctly different state of mind, but sometimes just a fine line away from sane. In Susanna's case, the film suggests the catalyst to her recovery is seeing her friend's dead body and deciding that killing oneself looks "pretty ridiculous". She decides it's better to talk it out with her therapists, and make the effort to get better. She notices that while Lisa might always tell the truth, it's often just an excuse to hurt others around her. Where she once thought the outside world was full of lies, needing drugs and alcohol to drown out the pain, she figures it's better to play along at least a little bit instead of languishing in the mental hospital. The performances are uniformly good. Executive producer Ryder gives one of her best performances, starting as timid and depressed, and evolving into a more confident individual gaining control of her life by letting go. Jolie is quite believable, and steals many of the scenes she's in, alternating between protective and mean-spirited to those around her. Goldberg and Redgrave are particularly good in support, and the young women patients are believable and sympathetic. While possibly dismissed as just a chick flick, Girl, Interrupted is instead an interesting and sympathetic character study that both sexes could appreciate. If you would like more information or support on Borderline Personality Disorder, check out the website at BPD Central If you would like to respond, please click the E-Mail Press Here To Go To The Review List Page