High school seniors and best friends Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) are on the brink of graduating, with no long-term plans besides living together and finding everyday jobs. They're both outcast cynics, but Rebecca is more successful with the boys. The creative Enid is soon told she will only graduate if she attends a remedial art school under the tutelage of a teacher (Illeana Douglas) who dismisses her work as shallow. The pair then find a personal ad from a lonely man named Seymour (Steve Buscemi) who's trying to contact a woman he met recently but briefly. After then arranging a dinner date with him via a prank call with the help of their shop assistant friend Josh (Brad Renfro), Enid meets Seymour and soon sympathises with him. They then bond over a shared love of art and retro music and she decides to try to locate women for him to date. From here, Enid's and Rebecca's paths gradually separate until both their friendship and Enid's relationship with Seymour are threatened.
Ghost World is another one I've only just seen within a week of reviewing it here, but within less than one viewing I really was just beguiled. Based on Daniel Clowes' comic book series, director Terry Zwigoff seemed to instinctively know exactly what kind of touch this proudly offbeat and brutally honest material required, and he astutely brings that to each scene; his direction refreshingly manages to be neither superficially bohemian (a la Juno) or more conventional than it realises (a la Lady Bird). In any case, he had a very solid foundation to work from; his and Clowes script was deservedly nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. He also has made some strange but very cunning soundtrack choices, ranging from Bollywood songs to jazz and blues.
But surely the brightest spots here are the main cast. Birch, fresh from her breakout role as the contemptuous daughter in 1999's American Beauty, has a quite similar character here until Enid discovers a real connection with the opposite sex, and Birch effectively shows a more compassionate side in exploring this. Johansson, here in her own first major part, shows why she's now become a Hollywood heavyweight as she brings a convincing blend of authority and vulnerability to Rebecca. Seymour is a pretty obvious character for Buscemi to play but his performance is all the more realistic and affecting because of its subtlety, and Renfro's turn now emphasises just what a tragedy his death in 2008 aged only 25 was.
Subversive but genuinely entertaining, resonant and since, I think Ghost World should've become the mainstream cult hit (although it has attained a cult following) that the trashy shit Mean Girls (2004) did.
No comments:
Post a Comment