LOST AND DELIRIOUS
Sufferin’ Sapphists, boarding-school division.
Running time: 100 minutes. Not rated (nudity, sexual activity). At the Lincoln Plaza and the Quad.
‘LOST and Delirious” is set at an extremely liberal girls’ boarding school, where the authorities don’t seem to mind at all when a pair of teenage students regularly jump into bed together.
Considering they’re played without clothes by lookers Piper Perabo (“Coyote Ugly”) and Jessica Pare (“Stardom”), much of the audience isn’t likely to mind, either.
This is the first English-language feature by veteran French Canadian director Lea Pool (the delightful “Set Me Free”), who’s working with a bigger budget, glossier production values and a much dumber script (courtesy of Judith Thomas, from a novel by Susan Swan) than usual.
For no particularly good reason, the story is told from the vantage point of Mouse (Mischa Barton), a meek young woman who arrives at the school mourning the death of her mother.
She is assigned to share a room with Paulie (Perabo), a high-strung, big-lipped adoptee, and the nervous Tory (Pare), who has a troubled relationship with her parents. Mouse soon discovers her roommates have an uninhibited physical relationship – or, as she puts it, “At first, I thought they were practicing for boys.”
Things go awry when some of the younger girls, including Tory’s younger sister, surprise the lovers in bed together. Tory, fearful of her parents’ reaction, breaks things off.
Before long, a distraught Paulie sees her ex-bedmate making love against a tree with a guy named Jake (Luke Kirby).
Paulie flips out and commits a series of increasingly ridiculous hijinks – including challenging Jake to a sword duel for Tory’s hand – that would get her thrown out of any school in the real world, but are tolerated by the sympathetic lesbian principal (Jackie Burroughs).
She also quotes a lot of Shakespearean poetry.
Perabo gives a fairly impressive and flashy performance, even when the script descends into melodrama.
Pare isn’t as lucky; it’s not at all clear from her unsteady acting whether her Tory is still in love with Paulie.
“Lost and Delirious” is most notable for Pierre Gill’s photography of the two leads, who are lit as objects of worship.
