Girl, Interrupted (1999)

After being touched by the sensitive film "Heavy", I couldn't wait to see what would happen with director James Mangold. This brash, barbed, insightful and touching drama is the result, and although it has problems, you end up caring about a lot of people you might otherwise try to avoid. Winona Ryder's performance as a young woman being treated for psychological problems in the all-girl wing of an institution in the late 1960s is very fine; she's mannered at times and a little coy, but she seems a sweet puppet with her wires cut, a bobbing head doll, and one never grows tired of her. Angelina Jolie won a Supporting Oscar as the lead troublemaker, and it is a ferocious bit of acting, but her character is an enigma--playful at times, then cruelly straightforward--and Jolie has to work extra hard to give her depth. I was perplexed by some of Mangold's touches (like having one character commit suicide while listening to the Skeeter Davis record "The End of the World", ha ha); but the sneaky trip away from the hospital that Ryder and Jolie take is an amazing section that works rough magic all on its own. Whoopi Goldberg isn't bad as the main nurse on the floor, but a complacent Goldberg is an automatic anticlimax and I don't understand Mangold's casting here. However, the film displays on occasion the work of someone wonderful breaking through, and there are many heartfelt sequences, quick and quirky editing techniques. For anyone bemoaning the obvious ("Not another institution movie!"), this should be a pleasant surprise. *** from ****