Ghost World

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Film Description

Rebecca and Enid think their small town sucks, so they befriend subversive jazz geek Seymour. When Seymour falls for Enid, Rebecca walks. Enid? Well, Enid's not so sure. Echoing the strange world of a Crumb cartoon, Zwigoff's latest is way weird...

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Review by Mike McCahill on 5th June 2002

Directed by Terry Zwigoff from the Daniel Clowes graphic novel, Ghost World centres around two teenagers straight out of high school, released into an America of junk food and mini-malls as far as the eye can see. Enid (Thora Birch) spends her weeknights defacing magazine photos of models with Tipp-Ex and black marker pen before checking a phone which never rings to make sure that it’s still connected; Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) takes a job in a coffee franchise, makes arrangements to rent an apartment, and tries to keep her head down. The man who comes between them is Seymour (Steve Buscemi), a sad-sack record collector whom Enid vows to get "knee-deep in pussy by the end of the summer."

All the characters seem comic-book cartoonish, but also - to anyone who’s kept their eyes open in the world long enough - very real, and the film is very good on (female) friendship, with the engaging Birch and Johansson pairing all giggles and nudging elbows: the two actresses seem to have an entire history of in-jokes behind them. Clowes clearly laments the manner in which authentic forms of culture have been misappropriated and processed into phoney corporate pap; as a result, the film is very clever in the way in which it folds topical issues of corporate sponsorship and censorship into its plot. The girls’ high-school graduation, incidentally, is sponsored by Dunkin’ Donuts.

Lucky we got this director and these actors - all of whom, I would suggest, are authentic souls - for this project rather than their mainstream equivalents, because it would be all too easy - and far too chilling - to imagine the film’s fundamental sensitivity blanded out into yet another vehicle for Freddie Prinze Jr. There are a high number of laughs here, true, but as the film progresses, it develops into something poignant and melancholic. It ends strangely (and hauntingly) rather than conclusively, with the suggestion that further volumes might be on the cards - or that there are only two ways to get out from underneath America’s infinite set of striplights: death, or to disappear underground.

It’s hard not to like - and to slip into Enid/Rebecca speak for a moment, you’d have to be a moron not to like - a film which recognises the betrayal inherent in a loser calling a fellow loser a loser, and it’s a film for everyone who’s been pushed to the peripheries by what passes for culture these days; for those of us who insist that not everything should be for sale, trying to salvage something from what remains of the world. It’s an uphill struggle, of course, and the film knows that, too: its abiding image is Buscemi’s weak half-smile, and that’s a face that feared the worst if ever there was one.

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This film is part of the following Film Collections

Comic Book Adaptations

Including: Addams Family Values, Alien vs Predator, American Splendor, Asterix And Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, Barbarella, Batman, Batman - The Movie (1966), Batman Returns, Blade, Blade 2.

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