Trailer

Back in the day, before he became obsessed with Fifty Shades of Grey and casual homophobia, Bret Easton Ellis was an interesting writer with a number of interesting things to say. The Rules of Attraction, arguably his most famous and accomplished novel outside of American Psycho, was one of my favourite books as a teenager. As a godless sodomite born into a family of amoral atheists, I needed something to act as a bible and, for a while, The Rules of Attraction filled that void. I felt like I “got” it more than anything else I’d ever read and, more importantly, I felt like it “got” me too. It was the book that I always turned to when I…

In high school I read American Psycho, on the recommendation of a woman in Connecticut I met in an AOL chatroom when I was 13 and thought I was in love with. I was thrilled by the book for all the wrong reasons, knowing so little about affluence and the elements of the 1980's that it was satirizing, just enjoying the graphic descriptions of murder and the absurdity of chapters about Huey Lewis and such. I would later, after a couple viewings of Mary Harron's adaptation (which I liked but did not love), come to appreciate what Bret Easton Ellis was really doing with his book.

The Rules of Attraction came at just the right (and wrong) time for me.…

Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, the film centers around Patrick Bateman's younger brother and his college friends bizarre mating rituals that mix sex, drugs, music and mayhem in a kaleidoscopic story about three students entangled in a curiously surreal romantic triangle...

As the movie went by I kept thinking about Tarantino, I kept thinking that if Tarantino were to make a teenage soap opera it may end up looking something like this. Dialogue heavy... I mean here is a legitimate monologue from the film:

"Took a charter flight on a DC-10 to London. Landed at Heathrow. Took a cab to the city center. Don't let people lie to you: hostels are for the ugly. I'm staying in…

Bret Easton Ellis wurde ja nun schon öfters verfilmt meist mehr Schlecht als Recht. Sei es nun total reinfall wie „Unter Null“ oder auch „American Psycho“. Nun gibt es aber auch „Die Regeln des Spiels“ welches sich von den anderen verfilmungen abhebt. Doch auch hier fehlt im Film manchmal die Genialtät des Autors. Doch dafür bietet der Film alleine Optisch die ein oder andere Idee. Der Anfang führt uns die Hauptcharakter vor. Doch da gibt es eigentlich das Highlight des Films. Er spult immer wieder zurück zu einem anderen Handlungspunkt der Party. Doch das wirklich Interessante kommt dann zum Vorspann, der läuft auch Rückwärts, so wird klar das wir hier eben ein Teil des Finales gesehen haben. In eben diesem…

The prettier they are on the outside, the uglier they are on the inside. That's a general rule of thumb in the acerbic vision of Bret Easton Ellis. His depictions of super-rich-kids filling the empty hours of their empty days with empty pursuits defined an American generation (see 'Less Than Zero'). Ellis' books have translated fairly well to the big screen. Perhaps the Brat Pack (Robert Downey Jr. aside) were a little lightweight for Marek Kanievska's 'Less Than Zero', but Christian Bale and director Mary Harron perfectly captured the writer's spirit in their version of 'American Psycho'. Here, however, Roger Avary tops them all, with a movie that's as stylistically bold as its content is unflinchingly honest.

If Avary's script…