Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, with a new school year beginning, we’re revisiting the 2001 boarding school-set romance Lost And Delirious.
September marks the official end of summer season. As beach parties come to a close, we exchange swimsuits for knitted sweaters and steamy poolside flings give way to cozy autumn romances. This is the month where most students also go back to school, one of the prime locations for burgeoning young love and queer awakenings, as film has repeatedly shown us through the years.
This week, we’re taking a trip back to the early ‘aughts with the 2001 teen lesbian romance Lost And Delirious, featuring a trio of would-be prestige actresses coming of age and going through the turmoils of first love and heartbreak in an all-girls boarding school. Although somehow forgotten by mainstream culture (even within queer circles), the film is a wildly entertaining portrait of the overflowing emotions of teenage girlhood and blossoming sexuality, but also a time capsule of queer tropes that feels equally dated and boundary pushing.
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The Set-Up
Lost And Delirious follows Mary “Mouse” Bedford (Mischa Barton), a young girl whose father and stepmother drop her off at a boarding school, and gets assigned to room with Paulie (Piper Perabo) and Tori (Jessica Paré).
Mary is initially taken aback by the abrasive and extroverted nature of her roommates, and soon discovers that they are in a passionate sexual and romantic relationship with each other. One morning, Tori’s younger sister Allison (Emily VanCamp) walks in on her and Paulie in bed together and rumors quickly spread about them. When Tori denies her relationship with Paulie and cuts her off, despite their clear connection and displays of affection, Mary finds herself in the middle of a lover’s quarrel that becomes the center of attention for the school, with tragic consequences.
Teen Romance 101
The film (directed by Léa Pool and based on the novel The Wives Of Bath by Susan Swan) succeeds both as a moody, slightly pulpy teenage romance drama that is strongly grounded in early 2000s style and culture, and as a mostly compassionate and three-dimensional portrayal of young queer love, something relatively rare for the genre and the era. It shares a lot of stylistic and narrative DNA with films like Cruel Intentions, The Craft, and Thirteen, and TV dramas of the time like Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, Barton’s own The OC, and Skins.
It wears the deep emotion and temperament of its teenage characters on its sleeve (often verging on the melodramatic), but always as a reminder that no one feels more strongly than a teenage girl in love. It’s full of stylistic flares like freeze frames, slow motion sequences, and needle drops of emotional ballads that reflect the emotional state of the protagonists.
And it follows many tropes of teenage narratives that we’ve seen done and repeated for decades: rocky relationships with parents and academic staff, the reliance on classic literature to reflect the themes of the story, the use of a sport to channel rage. It’s a movie that feels deeply familiar (and to a certain degree, comforting) in its packaging.
First Heartbreak
Lost And Delirious stands out, of course, for the young queer relationship at its center. The romance between Paulie and Tori is not necessarily treated as taboo by the movie itself; the moments early in the movie that they spend together are genuinely tender, and don’t shy away from the passion and sex that any other teen love story would have. But once the secret is out and they are condemned by the school, it turns dark.
Tori does her best to repress and hide her love for Paulie (and thus her own identity); she goes and seeks out a boyfriend in the neighboring all-boys school, and makes sure Paulie knows she is slipping away to sleep with him. Paulie becomes possessive and obsessive over Tori, having emotional outbursts in class and challenging her boyfriend to literal sword fights.
After Tori publicly denies her at a dance, she does what is perhaps the most dated trope in the film, and commits suicide. It’s unfortunate that the movie ends in such a dour note (particularly in the context of so many other gay love stories ending in death or tragedy), especially as it otherwise feels genuinely refreshing and different in its blending of style and theme.
Roll Call
The performances are as committed as the story requires them to be. Piper Perabo in particular truly shines as Paulie, who wears her heart on her sleeve at all times, and that ends up being her demise. She also carries herself with the allure and poise of a confident queer girl in progress, particularly as she suits up to court Tori at the dance.
Jessica Paré (who years later would find herself in the middle of another romantic sh*tstorm in Mad Men) embodies the sweetness, naiveté, and fear of a girl that doesn’t quite know how to process herself yet, one that retrieves rather than expands when confronted.
Mischa Barton may be the most subdued of the three, mainly because her character requires her to mostly be a passive observer with not much agency in the story. Even Emily VanCamp (who would go on to star in the camp TV classic Revenge, as well as many Marvel films) steals her scenes as the young tattletale that sets the whole plot in motion.
School Is In Session
Lost And Delirious is a genuinely surprising discovery. As a teenage drama, it succeeded at capturing the particular feeling of an era; the despair, confusion, and turmoil of being sixteen and in love and living at the turn of the century.
As a queer film, while it has compelling performances at the center that brings gravitas to the characters, it also falls into the potholes of tragedy and stigmatization that we have fortunately moved beyond. It’s a breath of fresh air but also a sigh of relief. Like looking back at your first heartbreak.
Though Lost & Delirious isn’t currently streaming through any officials channels, it can be ordered on DVD via Amazon Prime and might be worth a YouTube search. *hint, hint*
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