THE RULES OF ATTRACTION (Roger Avary, 2002)

Reviewed: October 12th, 2002

I've read two Bret Easton Ellis novels ("Less than Zero," "American Psycho"), and seen three Bret Easton Ellis inspired films (Less than Zero, American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction). Two conclusions are inescapable:

(1) I detest Bret Easton Ellis.
because,
(2) Bret Easton Ellis is not talented.

Wait! Don't close the window yet, Ellis-lovers. And wipe those grins off your faces. I know I'm playing right into your hands, so allow me to elaborate:

You can until-your-blue-faced complain about how I don't understand what Ellis is doing. You can complain about how I, ignoramus that I am, clearly fail to recognize Bret is a social satirist, furiously condemning the despicable behavior/lifestyles/people he so dutifully and flatly writes about.

But I do recognize Ellis is a satirist. I do recognize he's not glorifying his characters. The problem is not one of intent then, the problem is that Ellis's satire is facile, broad, mind-numbingly repetitious and completely ineffective.

Ellis's creations are one-note, utterly overblown caricatures that are so wholly unrealistic, any chance of audience empathy (we need that empathy, however distant, if we are to soak in the "don't become these people!" message) is lost. They have a lot of mindless sex, do a lot of drugging and drinking and are generally & completely, lost, hollow, superficial, mindless, souls.

I allow that satire is predicated on exaggeration. But Ellis takes his hyperbole way, way, way too far. Sure, tons of real-life people share some of Easton Ellis's characters' traits. But these real-life people are three-dimensional, in-the-flesh human beings. They have traces of texture. They can perhaps still take pleasure from one solitary thing besides sex/drugs/alcohol, like say, visiting a zoo on an overcast Sunday afternoon or driving on a rain-drenched night to an old, favorite, movie house or going to their little cousin's birthday party. Perhaps they like to eat Frosted Flakes for breakfast (along with their bottle of Jack Daniels, a goes-without-saying, every-meal requisite) and take a kinda nostalgic, bittersweet comfort in this childhood cereal. And then, yes, they can go back to having undiscriminating sex all day and all night. And then they can go back to doing cocaine until they nosebleed. And then they can go back to being vapid and complaining about how "you can never really know anyone else." Yeah, Ellis, the world is so fucking meaningless. Boo-hoo.

But why can't Ellis ever show us why? Because he's a hack. Because his limp brain can never advance a train of thought far enough. Why can't we ever really know anyone else, Ellis? I'm betting a hell of a lot of people (perhaps, say, spouses and parents) would disagree with that thesis, so you better explain. Why is the world so pointless, Ellis? ...Duh, I dunno. But gosh darn 80s consumer culture sure did breed excess, didn't it!

Ellis shoves reprehensible actions in our faces and simply says "this exists." I know it exists. Just as I know what feces smells like without having to bury my head in the toilet every day. Tell me something new, interesting, at least vaguely enlightening, why don't ya?

Mark Twain is a satirist. Kurt Vonnegut is a satirist. Bret Easton Ellis is too obsessed with the surface/unwilling to dig deeper to ever achieve true distinction as such.

Hey Ellis, when is your next novel about a bunch of floundering, young people who do a lot of drugs and fuck a lot gonna come out? I await with baited breath!

Roger Avary's impressive directorial talent is undeniable, as evidenced in his first film Killing Zoe and now The Rules of Attraction. He employs a lot of gimmicky techniques in ROA, and they almost all work, save the excessive, superfluous rewinding/fast forwarding. Oh so this is what a scene looks like played very slowly in reverse... oh, oh look here it is in forward again... wow, and, uh, there's it in reverse. I had no idea! But seriously: what does this time-draining nonsense add?

My favorite technique Avary employs is one I'd never seen before: split-screening two characters talking to each other, so it appears each is staring directly at the audience, emphasizing their isolation (cause I'll be damned if every character Ellis has ever conceived isn't isolated!). Avary shows time and time again he can mold a mighty sequence, in and of itself. Take that girl's suicide, for instance, as put to the anguished strains of Harry Nilsson's "Without You." Avary's work is so assured here, so deserving of actual substance and context, which alas, is nowhere in sight. A girl who we've virtually never seen previous kills herself. Forgive me if I don't care. When Avary uses a few, flashbacking zoom-ins to later reveal just who the hell she was (ta-dah! it was a girl who anonymously lusted after Sean!), forgive me if I still don't care. And forgive me if I think a girl disturbed and pathetic and unrealistic enough to actually lust after a guy like Sean...

That is, Sean Bateman, brother of American, psychotic serial killer Patrick Bateman and protagonist of ROA. As played by James Van Der Beek and written by Ellis/Avary, he is mean. And cruel. And vicious. And lacks even an oz. of humanity. We are privileged enough to watch him sit on the can, wipe his ass and pick his nose, I guess to reinforce just how mean/cruel/vicious/[insert synonym here] he is. Apparently we should all be wary of turning into Sean. He is mean/cruel/vicious cause his life is [insert synonym for empty here]. He is confused. Be scared, everyone! Remember, we can never know anyone else!

...might not be better off in Heaven, than forced to endure our allegedly meaningless world's bitter fates.

Avary presents disgusting, fractured pieces of more fully formed characters we've all seen before. But previously, in other films, these characters had some depth to them. In ROA, they don't. It's like a band releasing a "The Worst Of Our Outtakes" collection to show other bands how not to suck.

Sean is in love with Lauren. Lauren is played by Shannyn Sossamon, one of the most promising, effective young actresses working today. She nearly (miraculously) manages to make an actual person (which woulda been the only blooded character in ROA) outta her underwritten skeleton and does manage to create the only ROA character I didn't hate, which is cause alone for celebration. Rather, Sean thinks he is in love with Lauren despite the fact he's had less-than-one conversation with her which equals one of the most unconvincing "I-think-I'm-love-with" cinematic happenstances I've ever seen. Oh, but that's the point, Jared! See, Sean is so shallow and [insert synonym for empty here] he can fall in love with a girl who he's only said three words to, strictly because he can't have her. Ohhhhhhhhhh so that's the point? Sorry I forgot this is the age of irony and distance! Actually exploring why someone might sensibly fall in love with someone else is forbidden! Love is not sensible! After all, the world is meaningless, right?!

And round and round the futile, uninvolving love triangles go.

The Rules of Attraction fails precisely because Avary has made a perfectly faithful adaptation of Ellis. He has distilled all of Ellis's flaws into a single film and nowhere is this more apparent than the mini-DV, Victor-in-Europe sequence. In super-fast VO, Victor recounts how he: 'Had sex with Romanian supermodel. Got blow job from hot French girl. British woman let me cum on her tits, provided I didn't get any on cum on her Chanel suit.' Repeat, repeat, repeat and on and on and on. Avary says he is -- just shoot me now -- currently editing this Victor-in-Europe footage into a feature length film. Considering the sequence nearly outstays its welcome at four minutes, I can't think of anything I'd rather see less than an hour and a half of Victor's hedonism.

I would, however, like to see a movie based around Richard "Dick" Jared instead. Russel Sams, an explosive jackrabbit with a brilliantly fine-tuned sense of comic timing, stole the movie for me as this guy. His absolutely hysterical work in his scene with Faye Dunaway and Swoosie Kurtz is easily The Rules of Attraction's high point.

(I suppose by the same token I should finger ROA's low point. Or points, rather, aka the two extended, tedious sequences where Van Der Beek interacts with the massively cliche Rupert [Clifton Collins Jr.]. He's a drug dealer and he's........ manic! And he.......... wants the money he's owed! Who'd of thunk it?)

Tomandandy's spacey, electronica-driven score is bafflingly underused. Avary has long expressed extreme admiration for the work they did on the film, and the few sequences in which their score is prevalent are the only times ROA feels like it might start to sing. I'm particularly thinking of Sean and Paul Denton's (Ian Somerhalder) surreal, little, bus farewell. Tomandandy and Sossamon are the only rays of light in this film, the only artists who realize that a touch of beauty and hope and class are the crucial anecdotes necessary to counteract Ellis's glib, labored, virus-ridden bleakness. I wish Roger Avary had embraced those considerations when he sat down to translate Ellis's ridiculous world onto celluloid.

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