Lost and Delirious (2001)

"Incredibly cheesy stuff" - a review by em_fiction

Alright, so your friends are talking about a film that was on SBS called Lost and Delirious with "that chick from Coyote Ugly (2000)", and she apparently plays a girl at a boarding school. Not just that — she has a lesbian affair with another schoolgirl. I mean, come on, lesbian schoolgirls, one of them being "that chick from Coyote Ugly", what more could you possibly ask for?

Fast foward a couple of months, you see in the TV guide: SBS, Saturday at 9.30pm, Lost and Delirious. Yes! What could possibly be better than lesbian schoolgirls on a Saturday night? Well, as I learnt from watching this load of tripe, a lot.

The plot: Mary 'Mouse' Bradford, played by The O.C.'s Mischa Barton (before any of you fellas wet yourselves, no, she does not go nude in this film. She was fifteen at the time, I think that's considered uh, what's it called... child porn) is a naïve newcomer to a girl's boarding school. She moves into the same room as Tori (Jessica Paré, who looks an awful lot like Liv Tyler in her IMDb headshot) and Paulie (the Coyote Ugly chick, who does in fact have a name: Piper Perabo). Mouse soon realises that Paulie and Tori are lovers, and keeps it a secret well-aware of its forbidden nature. Soon enough, their secret goes public, and Tori, totally humiliated, embarassed and ashamed, ends it with Paulie. Paulie, however, is very stubborn, defying the disapproval of everyone to try and win back Tori.

The plot is rather similar to But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), another film about lesbians struggling to get together in a place where homosexuality is prohibited. Although both films were relatively bad, at least that film was funny. This wasn't even funny (well, I guess it wasn't meant to be, but still, it would've helped its rating in this review). It starts off moderately fascinating, when we're introduced to each character and their individual traits; Mouse being shy and quiet, Paulie being loud and mischievous and Tori being, uh... normal? Yeah, that'll do.

Anyway, as of a certain point in the film, it starts to go down. Steeply. Very steeply. As a matter of fact, so steeply that you could pretty much consider it a vertical drop. The film smothers you with Paulie's broken heart: oh no! Look at her! She's been dumped! And she's so desperately trying to get back her one true love! Well, if she wasn't so fucking obnoxious in the first place, it might've made it slightly easier to care about her. No, just not hate her. As much.

It was indeed quite terrible. The film is about as shallow as the guys who are about to go rent it out after reading this review just to fast-forward to the lesbian bits. In fact, that is probably deeper than watching the whole film for its "merit". Thumbs up for the lesbian scenes — everything else: down. Sorry SBS, I'll just stick to OZ. Maybe next time.