At The Movies
`Lost And
Delirious'
7.;
The child of a Holocaust survivor
and an emotionally disturbed mother,
filmmaker Lea Pool makes films
about tortured adolescents.
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Special to the Jewish News
Ff wino
• Ft Se-rvice Bar
• Private Room
• Dine-In and Carn--t
1)1
tier
Specials Not Included • Dining room Only
Sunday Thru Thursday • Excludes Holidays
Expires 8-30-01
7/13
2001
78
rench-Canadian director
Lea Pool calls her latest
movie a teenage-lesbian ver-
sion of Romeo and Juliet.
In Lost and Delirious, which
opens today in Detroit, the star-
crossed lovers are Tory (Jessica Pare)
and Paulie (Piper Perabo of Coyote
Ugly). The girls are roommates and
bedfellows at an exclusive boarding
school for girls.
But when classmates begin gossip-
ing about the relationship, Tory
abruptly ends the affair. She's con-
cerned that her parents will reject
her if they think she's a lesbian. To
prove she's straight, she begins dat-
ing a young man.
The unfolding tragedy is told
from the point of view of Mouse
(Mischa Barton), a new girl at
school who shares a bedroom with
Tory and Paulie.
Pool's first English-language film,
a hit at the 2001 Sundance Film
Festival, is lyrical and moving, if
overly earnest and overwrought. But
all the angst is the point, the direc-
tor insists.
"Adolescent love is often melodra-
matic," says Pool, who as a teen -
ardently read poetry to lovers in the
moonlight. "For teenagers, every-
thing is about drama."
Yet the intense, soft-spoken direc-
tor doesn't see her film just as a teen
movie — or as a lesbian movie, for
Fl
that matter. "It's about any kind of
bias or social pressure that destroys
love," she says. "The doomed cou-
ple could be black and white, or
Jewish and gentile."
Pool, 50, should know. During
her childhood in Lausanne,
Switzerland, her mother's Protestant
parents bitterly fought with her
father, a Polish Holocaust survivor.
Her parents never married, in part,
because of the religious difference.
The discord helped to push Pool's
emotionally disturbed mother over
the edge. "At one point, she
attempted suicide," the director
says. "I spent the first 3 1/2 years of
my life in an orphanage, because
she couldn't take care of me. My
childhood didn't get any easier. I
always felt lost."
If Pool's protagonists are often
tortured adolescents, it's because the
director was once one herself. Both
her parents were too depressed to
properly care for her.
Pool's father felt guilty for surviv-
ing the Shoah while his parents and
sister perished. An unpublished
poet, he spoke 10 languages but
wasn't able to aptly express himself
in any of them. While he could be
warm and caring, he often took his
anger and frustration out on Lea,
striking her for the slightest infrac-
tion. Because he was chronically
unemployed, the rent on the fami-
ly's modest flat was perpetually
overdue.
Pool's mother, meanwhile, slaved