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Prozac Nation

Those of us who are hell bent on watching every Jessica Lange movie of her career may ponder upon valiant extremes from the rage and defiance of Frances Farmer to the disengagement of Meg in the adaptation of “Crimes of the Heart.”  Yet the neuropathic vortex of emotional blatancy normally possessed in the very fiber of Jessica Lange is this time equally matched onscreen with a mutual performance by Christina Ricci who depicts Elizabeth Wurtzel in “Prozac Nation.”  Co-produced by Ricci, it is the real life story of Wurtzel who is caught up in a bi-polar world of a purpose driven mother named Sara played by Jessica Lange and a wobegon father played by Nicholas Campbell who abandons and disappears enough to cause scars.   Lange does give a more than stellar performance as you can feel her desire for her daughter’s future laid out in blood-let cement as she plans for her scholarship awarded Harvard future.  Ricci treats the opportunity like an avoidance scheme in an all girl Catholic school, not realizing the stakes of a single mother who led her to this moment.  Wurtzel, played by Ricci, cuts her leg with a razor blade a good 9 inches from top to bottom at the beginning of the movie while in middle school.  The scene is then cut to an 18 year Ricci about to embark on college sitting naked in her bed.  Sara, Wurtzel’s mother, played steadily by Lange, comes in with a dull lemon colored suit ready to embark on her daughter’s new Ivy League experience by driving her to college.  Ricci, half disdainful, complies to the event like a visit to a senior center.  Once she arrives, she stumbles upon her roommate, Ruby, played by the talented Michelle Williams of “Blue Valentine” and “My week with Marilyn.”  Ruby connects immediately to Wurtzel.  The happiest moments in the film are from the time she arrives to Harvard until her first meltdown.  Things are hunky dory until Elizabeth gets laid and then Ruby and her throw a “Lose my cherry” party.  The movie is not intended for milestone shallowness, it is just a way for the director Erik Skjoldbjaerg to depict emotional mood pendulum swings of Wurtzel bigger than Courtney Love on a weekend binge.   Elizabeth Wurtzel’s depiction is more akin to autism than bi-polar disorder.  She demonstrates no genuine emotional feelings for people she cares about including Ruby and her first boyfriend, Noah, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyer of Velvet Goldmine.  Noah is the first one that taps into Elizabeth’s transcendental streamline genius as she scribbles a music review on a cigarette package while watching a real performance by Lou Reed.  He offers her mind-altering drugs and they end up sleeping together about a week later.  Noah is sincere but Elizabeth doesn’t seem to manage her feelings about sex any better than a college frat guy.  She reiterates the quote “Sex is a lot like drugs except you get sick of sex faster.” The first turning point in the movie comes when Elizabeth Wurtzel starts alienating those around her.  She gives her roommate’s boyfriend philacio and then tried to shrug it off.  She embarrasses Noah by her “loss of virginity” party.   The drugs, however, stimulate her writing genius of inspired  idols as Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, 1980s staples for any post Vietnam teen.  Going on a four day frenzy, Wurtzel can’t sleep until she finishes a paid Rolling Stone critique of Springsteen.  Her emotions and insomnia force her roommates and friends to drag her to ER after her behavior spirals out of control.  From then on, the movie is about her emotional vagrancy as her attention seeking behavior becomes like a poltergeist infused hex of acid tongue insults to those around her.  She globs on to a guy she met on a high, named Rafe played by Jason Biggs. Her first shot at true love is unraveled when she is uninvited yet follows him to Texas unannounced at Christmas vacation only to discover he has a severely retarded sister he must care for.  Wurtzel’s self -centeredness takes on the extreme when she accuses Rafe of indulging in the misery of others such as his sister.  “You get off on other’s misery, don’t you?” She sabotages the relationship and is shunned by her boyfriend  in the airport telling her “no more calls.”   The low point of the film is when she meets Ruby for drinks at New Years.  Wurtzel’s callousness forces Ruby to cry in grief after she accuses Ruby of never being able to love.  Ruby says “I am not crying for me.  I am crying for what it must feel like to be you.”  She gets back to school only to find out her mother has been robbed and beaten.  This is the first point in the movie where Elizabeth Wurtzel must demonstrate responsibility and concern for something greater than herself.  She rushes to her mom’s bedside in a crowded New York City hospital.  She contemplates suicide from the top floor of the hospital realizing she has never been there to help her mother.  After meeting with the shrink Dr. Sterling for months, Wurtzel is finally able to turn her life around with the wonder drug Prozac.  She attends to her mother’s needs while injured and pulls through.  The last few scenes shows her grandma, mother and her eating at a kitchen table and Wurtzel waiting on her elders.  On observation, one cannot really develop sympathy for Elizabeth Wurtzel who treats people as badly as her father treated her in her youth.  The movie can be summed up as a dark hole.  After sleeping with Rafe, she says “I can see why you want to kill your lover.  It’s the only way to possess a person… inhale the ashes of your dead lovers.”  The real life Wurtzel concluded “Sometimes someone will be standing in front of me, and already I feel him walking away. It’s only a matter of time, so what’s the point?” The real life subject has the emotional trust of ordering sea monkeys from the back of a magazine only to receive a killer snake.

Available on Netflix, Redbox