Lost and Delirious

Lost and Delirious stars a young Mischa Barton as Mary. Mary is sent to live at an all-girls’ school. Her roommates are two older girls named Paulie and Tori played by Piper Perabo and Jessica Paré. Paulie and Tori are two very close “friends” who have lesbian sex at night, completely unconcerned of the presence of a 14-year old they hardly know in the same room. However, Tori’s younger sister discovers their nighttime activities. And because apparently her parents are super homophobic, Tori lies and says Paulie was the sexual aggressor and then pretends to be straight. This sends Paulie into a melodramatic tailspin about gender and heteronormativity that does not end happily.

I don’t like Lost and Delirious because of how steeped in unnecessary melodrama the whole thing is. The reactions from both Paulie and Tori following the discovery of their relationship seem unnecessarily extreme. Tori’s actions allegedly stem from her being scared of her homophobic parents. But because she’s a teenager in a melodramatic movie, I assumed she might be exaggerating. I also don’t see why they couldn’t have kept their relationship on the DL for the remainder of their time at school and then started up again at university which is a plan they discuss earlier in the movie. That was still totally an option. But instead, sure. Shun your girlfriend to the point where she becomes mentally unhinged and a danger to herself. If everyone just chilled out and have a rational conversation, so much of this movie could’ve been avoided.

Lost and Delirious just felt like tragedy without proper backing. It takes place in a Canadian boarding school in the early 2000s. Much as kids can be cruel and Canada isn’t free of homophobia, that setting still seemed unlikely to be a place so horrible and oppressive to queer people that caused such dramatic events to happen. Also, where are the teachers during any of this? Paulie gets severely bullied because Tori pretty much accuses her of rape. At least one of those events would ideally end in some sort of adult intervention. But of course that doesn’t happen. Because if that happen, it would interfere with the supply of angst and easily avoided tragedy that fuels this movie.

I will say this for Lost and Delirious, the love story is done pretty well. The actresses have great chemistry and I love how it shows scenes of them in a platonic, friendship-looking relationship before we get the unexpected, explicit lesbian sex. There’s some great, devastating emotional scenes too after they break up. I believe these characters when they say they love each other. This is not always a given, especially with teen relationships.

I haven’t read The Wives of Bath, the book Lost and Delirious is based but I feel safe in saying this movie is a bad adaption. Not enough was done to translate this to the modern day. The Wives of Bath takes place in the 1960’s. That’s a setting where the level of homophobia and subsequent feelings of helplessness from its queer characters makes a lot more sense. Lost and Delirious took the story to the modern day but didn’t think to change the attitudes towards homosexuality. LGBTQ* acceptance has been slow but there have been major leaps forward between 1963 and 2001, especially in Canada. This was not taken into account in the way they chose to adapt the novel. If you’re going to change the time period, more needs to be done than telling the story the same way but with people in modern clothes.

Also, they punted the ending. The Wives of Bath which has a significantly different ending. It features Paulie’s character straight up killing a dude, stealing his penis and then getting arrested. In the film, Paulie just kills herself. Lame. Neither of these options are exactly a positive ending for a queer character but at least the whole penis-theft thing is unique! Also, an ending as nuts as that would be more in fitting with the over-dramatic tone that the movie had. Paulie felt pretty unhinged by the end of the movie, enough that I would not have found it out of character for her to do such a crime. Ending the film in suicide felt like a lot of buildup for the most common fate you can give a queer character. It was disappointing. I wanted to see Piper Perabo steal a dude’s dick.

There’s no joy to be found in Lost and Delirious nor positive representation of queer people. It just seems like all this queer tragedy could have been avoided if anyone had a lick of sense or had a rational conversation. The characters constantly make the worst possible choice mostly for the sake of moving the plot along. It’s a lot of the worst and most tiring cliches from the queer film genre all in one movie. Instead of being forward-thinking, Lost and Delirious is stuck in an attitude towards queer people more appropriate for the 1960’s than the early 2000’s. If I’m gonna watch a gay movie with Piper Perabo, it’s gonna have to be Imagine Me and You every single time.

Overall rating: 4.9/10

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