Director: James Mangold
Producers: Douglas Wick, Cathy Conrad, Georgia Kacandes
Executive Producers: Winona Ryder, Carol Bodie
Writers: James Mangold, Lisa Loomer, Anna Hamilton Phelan
Based on the book by Susanna Kaysen
Director of Photography: Jack Green
Susanna Kaysen: Winona Ryder
Lisa: Angelina Jolie
Georgina: Clea Duvall
Daisy: Brittany Murphy
Tobias Jacobs: Jared Leto
Valerie: Whoopi Goldberg
Dr Vick: Vanessa Redgrave
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"Girl, Interrupted" is a film about a young woman prone to depression who ends up in a private psychiatric institution. It is a tad sentimental and stereotypical in its portrayal of mental illness - but there are some fine performances and good one liners in the script.
Winona Ryder - looks great in this film as always - however her performance as the tormented Susanna Kaysen - a real life character on whom the story is based - is a little weak. But Angelina Jolie's Golden Globe winning performance is truly deserved. Jolie plays Lisa, a truly disturbed young woman who lurks the corridors of the institution with a convincingly menacing demeanour.
Susanna and Lisa's relationship is central to the narrative of the film and Susanna must ultimately decide whether she wants to spend the rest of her life in the company of Lisa and therefore in the confines of the mental institution or return to the harsh reality of life in the real world.
This was one problem I had with the film in that it suggests that people with mental illness can make choices about whether to be afflicted or not. At least in Susanna's case when Whoopi Goldberg - the nurse in charge of the ward - tells Susanna she is an indulgent middle class girl who should snap out of it.
There are moments of pure joy in the film where the young women invade the office of the psychiatrist who counsels them and swap notes on their various conditions.
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