FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
PRETTY PERSUASION
Following the likes of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless and Sarah Michelle
Gellar in Cruel Intentions, Evan Rachel Wood
holds her own as a teenage queen bee,
her porcelain skin and hypnotic blue eyes accentuating the pubescent
charm and demonic intelligence oozing out from within. But
unfortunately, she is the only element of originality in this social commentary-cum-teen
comedy turned tragedy.
The film begins with Kimberly Joyce (Wood) introducing recently arrived Middle Eastern
immigrant Randa (Adi Schnall) to her ritzy Beverly Hills high school. Fired from playing Anne
Frank in the school play,
Kimberly recruits Randa, as well as her best friend Brittany
(Elisabeth Harnois), to falsely accuse their English and drama teacher, Mr. Anderson (Ron
Livingston), of sexual assault. The film quickly moves on to a court scene, and from there it
backtracks to the events leading up to the case, where Kimberly's demented
yearnings for fame and most of all revenge are revealed.
Through Kimberly, America in Pretty Persuasion is depicted as a
society where sex is the ultimate currency. The
ambitious reporter Emily Klein (Jane Krakowski) easily
falls for Kimberly’s charms, Mr. Anderson has a penchant in seeing
his wife (Selma Blair) in a school girl uniform, and finally, Kimberly's father (an
over-the-top performance by the usually impeccable James Woods) is a
pill-popping workaholic who has more love for phone sex than for his
own daughter. While Pretty Persuasion is more politically incorrect
than, say, Heathers, it does not retain the satirical view with which
the former film melded comedy with tragedy. Pretty Persuasion is
too kinky to be serious and too self-aware of its critical purpose - in
one of the film's darker scenes, Randa writes "We are all sinners" in
Arabic on a chalkboard.
Though Wood makes Kimberly
enviably shrewd and cunning, she is made to shed a
remorseful tear in the final scene. Even her acting cannot save Kimberly from becoming
the stuff of teenage cliché. Ultimately, the most disturbing message
of Pretty Persuasion is that nowadays the apathetic teenager
recoiling into senseless violence has become so prevalent
that it hardly makes for an intriguing film. Marie Iida
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