f i l m crazy/beautiful
Director : John Stockwell
Cast : Kirsten Dunst, Jay Hernandez, Bruce Davison, Lucinda Jenney, Taryn Manning, Rolando Molina
(Touchstone Pictures, 2001) Rated: PG-13 by Cynthia Fuchs
PopMatters Film and TV Editor
e-mail this article Rock and a Hard Place P oor little rich girl Nicole Oakley (Kirsten Dunst) hates her life. She drinks too much and drives too fast, skips her classes and snipes at her blow-dried Congressman dad's (Bruce Davison) pro-environmental and anti-racist posturings, takes antidepressants and wears cute little midriff tops. Worse, she's trapped inside a formulaic teen-romance script. And yet, against these odds, she occasionally emerges as a vibrant, appealing character. From the start of John Stockwell's crazy/beautiful , Nicole is set up to be both typical and freaky, the kind of adolescent girl you've seen in a million other high school and/or "crazy white girl" movies: Mad Love Girl, Interrupted 12 Things I Hate About You , and yes, Save the Last Dance all leap immediately to mind. Her arty, unposed snapshot-collages fill the screen while her voice-over lays out the film's premise: "You could be anywhere when your life begins . . . ." Hers, apparently, begins in the next few instants we see on screen, as she's picking up trash on the beach in Pacific Palisades, California, doing duty (we learn later) for a DUI charge. She catches the eye of Carlos Nunez (Jay Hernandez, of NBC's | |
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