Let's talk about:

Lost and Delirious

by Carolin Lange, Germany

 

Structur

1. Overview
2. Summary
3. Specials
4. What I like about the movie

 

Overview

Lost and delirious is a very dramatic romance by the director Lea Pool. She is Canadian and already did a lot of French movies. Lost and delirious is her first English one.

It has been released in 32 countries.

You can see some of its covers in picture 1.
 


The movie is based on a novel by Susan Swan , which is called "The Wives Of Bath".

Starring:

Jessica Paré as Tory (Victoria Moller)
Mischa Barton as Mary (Mary Bedford)
Piper Perabo as  Paulie (Pauline Oster)

The movie takes place in a girl boarding school called "Perking Girls College" which is actaully the Bishop's University in Lennoxville. Lennoxville is located in Montreal (Quèbec/ Canada).

 

 

Summary

The film starts with Marys arriving. That lets us know that she’s new at the girl-boarding school.

Her dad told her to go there, because after his first wife's dead he’s got a new girlfriend and now he wants to spend more time with her.

Mary is really sad about her mothers dead and very angry at her dad. At first Mary seems to be very shy but then she become laxly and starts coming  along with her roommates very well.

They are called Tory and Paulie. You can see them in picture 4.

She spend a lot of time with her roommates and so its unavoidable that she soon notices that her roommates are more than just friends. But she doesn’t care for that and  decides to accept their lesbian relation.

She became close friends with both of them.

Less tolerate than Mary is Allison (Tory’s little sister) , when she sees her sister and Paulie still sleeping and nearly naked in bed.

Allison is really shocked and confused. After all I think that she wasn’t as shocked as her sister Tory. Tory feels caught. Paulie wants to go on with the relationship and maybe want to take the chance for a coming-out , but Tory is too afraid.

She talked with her sister and denies everything with saying that Paulie kind of raped her.

You can see Tory after this conversation in picture 3.

At this moment Tory begin to distance herself from Paulie, because she’s terrified of her really conservative parents reaction. Now Paulie's world shatters. Paulie acts like she doesn’t have anything to lose and that’s right. She has no other friends, accept of Mary and Paulie has no real family.

We know that Paulie was given for adoption as a baby. So she fights for her love and fights with Torys new lover (picture 6). This shows us how serious the situation is.

In the end Paulie jumps from the schools roof together with a raptor(Harris Hawk), she found 
together with Mary and Tory.
 

 

Specials

Quotations:

The most notable special: frequent using of Shakespeare quotations

Especially Paulie uses a lot of quotations.

They are out of:

- Macbeth
- Twelfth Nigh
- Romeo and Juliet
- Antony and Cleopatra

I think that the quotations really fit in the film and make it more dramatic.

In my eyes the using of Shakespeare quotations makes the books more interesting for young people.

For example I started reading Shakespeare and I really liked Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet.

Falcon:

Another special is the falcon, that Paulie found. It’s a Harris Hawk.

Paulie gets such a strong friendship to this raptor, that it seems to be weird at first.

But then you notice the similarities between the bird and the young, rebellious girl and begin to accept and like that relation.

The fact that Paulie answers her wish to fly away with her close friend in her suicide, makes the end of the movie so beautiful.

After all I’m not sad after watching the movie, because even though Paulie kills herself she is rather proud because of what she did.

 

Novel:

Like  I already told you in the overview Lost and Delirious is based on a novel by Susan Swan. "The Wives Of Bath" was inspired by Susan Swan’s own experiences in a boarding school.

She wins the Award for Fiction in 1993.

The novel itself plays in 1960.

The movie plays like 40 years later.

 

What I like about the movie

I really like the already mentioned specials especially the awesome quotations, which make me wanna read Shakespeare’s works.

One of the lots of  nice quotations is for example this one, out of Romeo and Juliet, which Paulie has written on her rooms wall:

“My bounty is as
boundless as the sea,
my love is as deep;

the more I give to thee,
the more I have,
for both are infinite.”

Like you maybe already noticed I like the character Paulie very much. I’m amazed of the way she fights for love and her strength.

I think that she’s got a really great imagination of love and I cheer what she said, when her class discuss the meaning of love:

“Love is. It just is. And nothing you can say can make it go away. Because it is the point of why we are here.

It is the highest poit and once you are up there, looking down at everyone else. You’re there forever.”

As I like the character Paulie I like the actress who plays her: Piper Perabo.

She’s a really good actress and played many different parts yet. She did movies like for example Lost and Delirious, Imagine me and you, Coyote Ugly and the Cheaper by the dozen.

Piper Perabo mostly plays in independent movies, which makes her really interesting in my eyes.

I was also amazed by the very detailed characters and relations to their families and between each other.

The details makes the movie so realistic, that you need to feel with the main parts. Lost and Delirious is very forming and I think some people could really learn something about love, tolerance and braveness from it.

Carolin Lange
01. February 2008