THE RULES OF ATTRACTION (2002)
“I didn’t know where I was going, some place unoccupied, I hoped…”
Director: Roger Avary
Writer: Roger Avary, based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis
Director of Photography: Robert Brinkmann
Editor: Sharon Rutter
Music: tomandandy
Notable Cast: James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, Ian Somerhalder, Jessica Biel, Kip Pardue, Jay Baruchel, Russel Sams, Eric Stoltz, Paul Williams, Paul Oakenfold, Kate Bosworth, Theresa Wayman
While we have many, many films to still analyze and dig into, with this post, we may have found my very favorite opening to a film… ever. If it’s not the best, it must be in my top 5.
Bret Easton Ellis. What can you say? While I enjoy writing, I can’t say the same for reading. Whether it’s my general lack of intelligence or some other failing, I’ve never been an avid book reader. I’m a movie guy (obviously). A near burning jealousy forms when I meet people who average a book a week. The only Ellis book I’ve read was American Psycho, and I’m not sure I even finished it due to how simultaneously boring/disgusting it was. I was also in high school at the time, so...
The film of that novel is an abomination, and completely misses the point, despite providing some “dank memes,” as the kids call them these days, or used to anyway, is “dank” still a thing? The only other Ellis adaptation I can think of is Less Than Zero, and maybe at the time it was hard hitting, but viewed in the 21st century the flick comes across like a bad after school special. It just does. It’s awful. There’s a reason Ellis himself cites The Rules of Attraction as the best adaptation of his work. In my mind, it’s not even a contest, despite not having read the book myself. I don’t need to, it’s clearly the best film of the 3.
Roger Avary. What can you say? I’m definitely in the distinct minority who thinks this cat is more talented than his much better known former writing partner, Quentin Tarantino. I know, I know, sacrilege! But in my mind, QT disappeared up his own ass after Jackie Brown (that discussion will be shelved until we analyze the 1ST 5 Minutes of Reservoir Dogs in a future post). Back to Avary, who wrote arguably the best sequence in Pulp Fiction (the Bruce Willis/Ving Rhames section, if my memory serves), wrote the screenplay for Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, which is one of my personal favorites from the aughts (and whose greatness will be discussed in a future post), and directed the criminally underrated Killing Zoe (“I got ze AIDS from ze needle”). He’s a more interesting filmmaker, who really shows a command of technique that Tarantino has never exhibited, despite QT directing more films. All of this technical command is on display in The Rules of Attraction, right from the first frame, and doesn’t let go.
Full disclosure, I went to college in the 90’s. This film takes place in 2002. The book was written in the late 80’s. It all feels very similar to my own experience in college. Nothing so dark as what takes place here, but the fashions and music, the evolving attitudes towards sex, and the complete lack of smartphones. Even the Internet is still kind of new (I actually remember dropping a class at NYU in 1996 when, on the first day, the prof said we’d have to turn in our assignments via e-mail. E-MAIL?!? I thought the guy was out of his mind). When Sean talks about jerking off to “broadband speed Internet porn” it comes across as quaint. Remember when broadband was a thing? I can’t discount the time capsule nature of this film or the effect that has on how I view it. As with all art, we bring ourselves to the experience, and when we see ourselves in the art, sometimes it can be a good thing, and sometimes it can be a very bad thing. But we all bring ourselves into that darkened theater, and if we’re lucky, the film speaks to us on an elemental, almost atomic level. This is one of those films, and I knew it right away.
1ST 5 MINUTES
The first shot of the film is a blurry close-up of Shannyn Sossamon’s Lauren with her voiceover, “And it’s a story that might bore you, but you don’t have to listen cause I always knew it was going to be like that,” followed by a shot of a stereotypical college frat-type party that doesn’t actually exist in real life, but is a well worn cliché at this point in the world of film. Though something subversive is afoot, as the subtitle lets the audience know it’s THE END OF THE WORLD PARTY (oddly enough, this sequence was filmed on the night of Sept. 11, 2001 in the wake of the WTC disaster). Interesting name for a college party. Look, you should know up front, I’m a sucker for out of focus shots and films that start with narration, and here we get both. I’m already inclined to like this movie, but let’s keep going, shall we?
Soon it becomes clear that Lauren is narrating from years in the future, when she is, in her words, a different person. The narration right away lets us know how good and insightful the writing is going to be. It’s smart, funny, honest. Lauren’s description of the party, the people, and the fact she lost her virginity at this party, is handled so well, and so compactly, and immediately puts us in a specific time and place. A place which is very dark, as we will see in a few minutes. Sossamon, whose never been a favorite of mine, is so good in this opening that it’s a wonder she’s kind of disappeared. Her performance is so true and lived in and authentic. Just look at her when she first tells us of Kip Pardue’s Victor (“only a little gay”), her breath quickens and there’s a longing and romanticism in her eyes. All conveyed without words, just her face in close-up. Great stuff. And, of course, the supposed love of her life is regaling one of the other male party goers with his adventures in Europe having as much sex with as many girls as possible. This juxtaposition of tenderness and nihilism runs throughout the picture, as people reach out for connection in what they’re finding is an increasingly cold, isolating, uncaring world. Even when you’re amongst supposed friends.
Continuing in voiceover, Lauren informs us that Victor is, in fact, fucking her roommate Lara (Jessica Biel, peak hotness), who we then see in a flash-forward in bra and shorts walking the halls of the dorm, drinking whiskey and beer, as she dances into a room full of horny football players to get gang banged. In the future Lauren narrates from, her former roommate is now married to a senator and has four kids, “how time distorts things,” says Lauren, in another incisive line of dialogue. It’s my failing as a writer that I can’t put into words exactly why this little vignette means so much to me. The mystery of the people you meet throughout your life, wholly ignorant of their past. Even the ones you wind up spending your entire life with. I love that kind of shit, sue me.
In Lauren’s distress over the unrequited love for Victor, she ends up talking to some douchebag who says he’s an NYU film student just visiting, but she thinks he may be a townie. She pretends to like what he likes despite having no clue really what he’s talking about. At that point, his gaze drifts over to another girl, Kristen Notneff, who in a close-up adjusts her bra through her shirt, raising her breasts ever so slightly. “And she was looking back at him with confidence because she knew that underneath her clothes, she was wearing a black bra with matching black lace panties… which I wasn’t.” The insecurity and vulnerability here is stark, and provides an incredible window into Lauren’s soul, and we’re barely 3 minutes into the film! To get the NYU student/townie’s attention back, she announces she has a joint back in her room.
And here is where we come to what makes this 1ST 5 Minutes so good. This, as we’ve already alluded to, is a very, very dark film, with arguably one of the darkest openings of any film I’ll ever write about here. I love dark films. LOVE. Lauren brings the dude back to someone else’s room (naturally), immediately passes out, and wakes up to find herself face down, getting raped of her virginity from behind, and not by the alleged NYU film student she was sort of attracted to, but by some ugly, drunk townie, while the NYU guy FILMS IT. Her narration continues throughout this ordeal, as the resignation on her face speaks volumes.
The camera stays close on her face as she is being raped, and slowly pushes in as her narration details how different it’d be had she lost her virginity to Victor instead. The tomandandy music turns ethereal, as she recounts in romance novel level detail how sweet and tender Victor would have been with her. It’s a moment that never fails to bring a tear to my eye, no matter how many times I’ve seen the film, which is many. How many flicks can say they have you crying in the 1ST 5 Minutes? That’s the power on display here, a girl losing her virginity at a drunken frat party, something played for laughs in teen comedies for years, is shown as the horrific and barbaric act it can sometimes be for women. An absolute knockout of an emotionally devastating opening.
But that’s not all. At her lowest moment, two dudes open the door and roll a keg in as she’s getting raped, laugh at what they see, followed by the rapist VOMITING right on Lauren’s back and face as he continues to rape her. At that moment, we get the first freeze frames (love a good freeze frame!) in the film, including one that identifies Lauren by name, with her voiceover, “I always knew it was gonna be like this.” She always knew it was gonna be like this. Like I said, dark. And fucking amazing.
The 1ST 5 Minutes of this flick had me fucking hooked. I got tears in my eyes, I feel for at least one character already, am invested in her, and then writer/director Roger Avary’s technical expertise kicks into high gear.
Seriously, after that opening, how are you not watching the rest of the movie?
The rest of the flick
Mid-rape, all of a sudden the movie winds backwards in time and we follow another main character at the party, Ian Somerhalder’s Paul, and see what he was up to while Lauren was being brutalized. It’s a novelistic conceit that Avary is masterful at pulling off, and does so repeatedly throughout the film.
After catching up with Paul and his misadventures in trying to find love with another guy, and dealing with anti-gay violence (from someone who would later come out as gay, naturally), we then rewind again to follow James Van Der Beek’s Sean (brother of American Psycho’s Patrick), whose face is beaten up, as he talks up Kate Bosworth and brings her back to his room under false pretenses. When we cut to these other characters, they take over the narration, so the inner lives of our main characters are always on display. Narration can either be very good or very bad, in this film it’s amazing, due in no small part to Easton Ellis’ amazing writing as filtered through Avary’s sensibilities.
After this opening triptych, we rewind an entire year of life at this college in Camden, Massachusetts, with amazing visuals played in reverse, from leaves rising back up to the tree they fell from to students skateboarding backwards. It’s extremely well done, accompanied by Verdi’s Aida – Grand March as interpreted by tomandandy. Great shit.
I’m not usually a fan of starting a film with the ending, as it usually drains some tension from a film when you know where it’s going. But here, it works for some reason. One of the main reasons it works is because what we see in the beginning is not necessarily how the film actually ends, which we’ll get to later.
But it’s not all good. One thing I wasn’t crazy about in this film was the overuse of actors, in my mind, just looking to subvert their wholesome images. You’ve got Van Der Beek trying to shed his Dawson’s Creek baggage, Jessica Biel trying to shed her Seventh Heaven baggage, and Fred Savage trying to shed his Wonder Years baggage. As someone who was never a fan of Van Der Beek previously, he absolutely nails it in this film. He’s very convincing as a particular kind of piece of shit. Biel is also perfectly cast. But the Fred Savage scene is terrible, and almost derails the whole film (thankfully he never pops up again, sorry, but Savage is not a good actor). And it’s really weird, because for a film I absolutely love, there are scenes that are so bad I almost wish I could re-edit the film and severely truncate them, most of all the Clifton Collins Jr. drug dealer subplot with Sean. It’s so bad… laughably bad, and belongs in an entirely different movie. It’s not interesting, it’s not funny, it’s not tense, it’s not new, it’s just goofy bullshit. I almost want to read the novel to see how much is from Ellis and how much is from Avary. I usually really like Clifton Collins Jr. as an actor (he’s great in the Christopher Lambert B-movie, Fortress), but not here. He comes across as a cartoon and doesn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the film. Adds absolutely nothing. Should have somehow remained on the cutting room floor along with Casper Van Dien’s turn as the American Psycho himself, Patrick Bateman.
Two mini-sequences in the film featuring minor characters (one of whom doesn’t even have a proper name) are two of my favorite things in the film, both for their style and again, the way a novelistic conceit can be translated visually and aurally.
First is the character known simply as Food Service Girl, who we come to find out is the one who has been leaving the purple love notes in Sean’s mailbox. In a bathtub suicide scene set to Harry Nilsson’s Without You, the girl carefully sets the scene of her death, and as her life ebbs away, the camera starts to spin slowly, the pitch of the music changes, and after Lauren finds her in the tub, we cut to various shots from earlier in the film (with great music to accompany) where the girl was on the edges of the frame, always at every party, always watching Sean. It’s incredible. Expertly set up. And continues the pitch black darkness that envelopes this film from beginning to end.
The other mini-sequence is one I’m sure fans of the film can already predict.
Victor’s insane, bacchanalian trip through Europe. As the story goes, Avary and Pardue supposedly just went around Europe with a camcorder and filmed all this spontaneously with no permits and using people they found as they went. It’s pretty genius. The editing, the narration, the music. It’s an amazing 4 minutes of film that again shows Avary’s inventiveness and daring (remember reading how Avary wanted to cut a feature out of all the footage he shot on the trip, but alas, I’m not sure what came of it). Most movies wouldn’t dedicate one sequence to a minor character, much less two. Such is the brilliance of this film.
My Favorite Scene is contained in the end sequence that throws the whole film into question. While we do wind up at The End of the World Party, it’s heavily implied that none of what we saw in the beginning triptych actually happened. I do find it somewhat confusing, and maybe ambiguous, because Lauren’s narration from the future clearly states this incident happened. Sean sees her walk off with the NYU film student. But at the end, when she meets Paul on the porch of the frat house, it doesn’t seem like she was just raped and vomited on. If she was, she’s remarkably blasé about it all. Ditto for Paul, who doesn’t look like he was just beaten up and spat on in a gay bashing incident. And Sean never does much of anything at the party except arrive, look around, have some sort of brief panic attack where he seems to recall a fever dream version of the events at the start of the film (so good, with the freeze frames/zooms into their mouths, gets me every time), then abruptly leave without picking up Kate Bosworth.
I, for one, hope this interpretation is correct and Lauren was never raped. For while I love dark shit, I’m also a hopeless romantic, and the thought of Lauren, or any girl, being treated like that makes my blood boil and is incredibly depressing and upsetting, cause I know shit like that happens on college campuses all the time.
All of it leads to one of my favorite exchanges in the film, right at the end, between Lauren and Paul. The dialogue here is amazing, and completely sums up the theme of the film.
“It doesn’t matter anyway, not to people like him…”
Long, meaningful, thoughtful, sobering pause… music kicks in.
“Not to people like us.”
Fuck, does this hit hard. Lauren and Paul stand there, in the snow, really absorbing this fact about themselves. Again, it never fails to bring my emotions to the surface. Just watching this clip right now, completely divorced from the rest of the film, and I teared up at this line. I always do. And I’m not sure why. There’s power in the realization of what one is, or is turning into. And the powerlessness inherent therein.
But we can hope. As Lauren’s narration from the future states in the 1ST 5 Minutes, she was a completely different person in college. I like to think she found peace and contentment as she grew into middle age.
Sossamon’s performance here, and in this entire film, is nothing short of revelatory. She’s put through the ringer and really carries the movie on her shoulders, as she’s called on to run the emotional gamut.
This end scene has it all. Amazing freeze frame zooms of the characters in anguish, one of the best tomandandy tracks in the whole movie, two separate parts that make me tear up with how dope they are, and then the final bit of voiceover, that’s naturally cut off mid-sentence (amazing), followed by the end credits rolling in reverse. How the fuck do people not love this shit?
As far as my Favorite Line goes, this one is tough, as there are so many lines to choose from. But since Lauren has all the best lines, of course my favorite line is one she recites when she breaks it to Sean they’ll never be together. He pleads he just wants to know her. Lauren’s response is devastating. “Nobody knows anyone else, ever. You will never, ever know me.” Devastating. And heartbreaking. And honest! She’s not lying. Who really knows anyone else? Do we even know ourselves? Doubtful.
Only to be followed by the snowflake tear. Brilliant shit.
Speaking of which, the snowflake tear is my Favorite Shot in a film full of great shots.
After Sean has been rejected by Lauren, he stands outside as snow begins to fall, a flake falls on the outside corner of his left eye, and melts down his cheek, like a real tear. I know there are some who feel that’s “showy” and obvious, “oh the somewhat sociopathic guy has ice for tears, good one!” But… it works, and the way it’s shot, as the camera follows the lone snowflake down from the sky to where it lands on Bateman’s cheek? Masterful, and impactful. Are these people capable of real emotions? Who knows? They seem to WANT real connection, but are they capable of it?
From concept to execution, genius level shit. Still remember sitting in the theater, seeing this shot for the first time and saying to myself, “Oh, that’s fucking good!” Yeah, most people love to point to the side by side one that eventually merges into a single shot, and it is nice choreography and timing, but emotionally it’s not as direct a hit as some other shots in the film, including this one.
The One Sheet
This film had some interesting posters for its advertising campaign. My favorite is probably the creepy illustrated one with the various heads in various states of emotional trauma. I’m a sucker for art posters, so this one wins, despite the fact that Jessica Biel doesn’t really belong on the poster as she is not a main character and does not have any narration or still frames introducing her character in the film.
The one with the stuffed animals in various states of copulation is interesting, and does tie into the film, as Lauren sees one of these stuffed animals as she is being raped. And I like it graphically. But if someone sees this poster and this poster alone, they’re gonna think it’s about furries or something. Not sure it works as an advertisement for this film, but I do like it from a visual perspective. Tagline makes no sense, though.
This third poster is so generic and makes it look like the type of TV shows these actors were looking to distance themselves from. I guess this was a paen to get the teen girls in the seats to traumatize them? Though I will admit I definitely plan on showing this movie to my daughter before she goes to college, because I’m just that kind of guy!
The fourth poster is a UK quad poster. It’s okay. I like the copy, and the font used, but it sort of makes it look like a romantic comedy set in a hospital or something. Would be interesting to hear the thought process behind this design cause it’s pretty goofy from where I sit.
That does it for The Rules of Attraction. Thanks for reading. And let me know in the comments what you thought of the 1ST 5 Minutes and what, if anything, alerted you to the greatness that would follow.
Oh my god, I didn’t even mention Eric Stoltz! Write an entire article about The Rules of Attraction and don’t cite Stoltz’s fantastic turn as the teacher, Mr. Lawson?
Wow, shows you how good this movie is that one article can’t contain all the multitudes within it. He’s such a piece of shit in this. But incredibly real. And very scary.
See you in two Fridays…