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The Rules of Attraction film review
THE RULES OF ATTRACTION
Running time: 110 mins
Starring: James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, Ian Somerhalder, Jessica Biel, Kip Pardue, Kate Bosworth, Thomas Ian Nicholas , Fred Savage, Faye Dunaway
If you are easily offended or suffer from a nervous disposition then look away now. The Rules Of Attraction is Roger Avary's bravura adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis's novel about sex, drugs and teenage angst on an '80s college campus.
The story concerns characters who have previously featured in Ellis's novels American Psycho, Less Than Zero and Glamorama - a motley crew of sexual deviants, wastrels and drug-popping thugs they are too.
Sean Bateman (James Van Der Beek) is a student at Camden College in New England. He is handsome, charming and utterly devoid of emotion, having slept through half of the female population, and with eyes on the remainder.
A series of anonymous love letters on scented purple paper, left in his mailbox, lead him to believe he has a secret admirer in his midst. In other words: a willing victim he has yet to deflower.
Suave young libertine Paul Denton (Ian Somerhalder) lusts after Sean and secretly dreams of wooing the womaniser into bed. There is something completely intoxicating about Sean's rage at the world, and Paul believes he knows the fastest way to his prey's heart (and hopefully his bed): copious quantities of class A drugs and alcohol.
However, chemical nirvana may not be enough of an inducement, since Sean seems besotted by Paul's ex-girlfriend Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon), who rejects sex as a necessary part of any relationship and tries to keep her carnal urges in check with frequent glances at a graphic manual on sexually transmitted diseases. She is currently obsessed with blonde hunk Victor (Kip Pardue), who has spent the summer in Europe getting up to God knows what.
One night of drunken revelry brings the three characters together - by the time dawn breaks, their lives are forever changed.
Avary uses every visual trick in the book, and invents a few new ones, to invest his tale with raw energy, including several sweaty sex scenes and explosions of graphic violence. Victor's European sojourn, which crams several weeks of travel into five giddy minutes of film, is simply breathtaking. So too is the way Avary sidesteps from one plot to the next, literally rewinding the film (including the music and soundtrack) at key junctures before propelling the story off into a completely new direction.
The young, sexy cast attacks the roles with gusto. Van Der Beek tears his Dawson's Creek poster boy to shreds with a performance of unfettered rage and frustration, including punching one irritating female student in the face. Sossamon is delightfully fragile and Somerhalder oozes both desperation and sex appeal as the pretty boy, whose same-sex bed-hopping passes by his pill-popping mother (a scene-stealing Faye Dunaway) unnoticed. He also takes part in a strip-tease to George Michael's "Faith" guaranteed to set your pulse racing.
For all of its moments of heart-rending horror, such as a deeply upsetting suicide sequence that is physically impossible to stomach, the film is speckled with glimmers of comedy and absurdity. One notable highlight is the restaurant scene from hell when Paul watches in horror as his mother and her best pal Mrs Jared (Swoosie Kurtz) get increasingly giggly on a cocktail of vodka and prescription medication.
The Rules Of Attraction is cinema at its most energetic and hip, set to a soundtrack of thumping pop classics. Succumb if you dare.
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