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The Rules of Attraction
by Christian De Matteo

Super

            Truly a wonderful little nasty movie.  The Rules of Attraction is a film about a group of mostly awful human beings treating each terribly and working out of nothing but selfishness.  Shedding his Dawson image like a man using a wrecking ball to tear down a dog house, James Van Der Beek plays a scummy, using, disgusting college student who has sex like a predator. 

Predatory, in fact, could be the one word that describes almost every main character in this film perfectly.

The story centers around a group of college students in a college where education almost never is brought up.  Camden is presented as a playground for rich, spoiled kids practicing nothing but pure and brutal hedonism.  Almost every major event in the film is based around a party where somebody is doing something to somebody against their will.

Roger Avary, who wrote the film for the screen and directed it (based on Brent Easton Ellis’s novel) takes his hip Pulp Fiction (yes, he was that other guy in the writing credits) savvy and fits it perfectly into this wildly outrageous environment.  The film starts at the end (remember the twisted chronology in Pulp?) introducing us to all the main characters.  When Avary is done with one, he literally rewinds, showing the entire scene again backwards, and goes back to the main party where we meet the next character and get to watch what he or she was doing when the previous character’s story was rolling.  Excellent.

Complete with a good deal of expectoration which we then also get to see in reverse, we learn the semester end fates of these sleazy folks at the beginning and then get to go back and watch their decent from the beginning.

Though often not the case with dislikable characters, Attraction does allow you to like or at least care about what is happening to these people.  They’re intriguing in their despicability, exciting in their wildness and outrageous in their decisions.  These are people most of us have run into at some point but never gotten this close with.  They make decisions we have all made but take them to extremes we’ve never thought about.  Mostly they hurt people in ways we too have, and never stuck around to see the results.

Obviously the cases are mostly extremes of normal situations, but the point is the same.  Are we aware of the effects our actions have on others?  What are the rules of attraction and do we all play by the same ones?  Are there really any rules?

Again, this is a fantastic and horrible little film (with an awesome cameo by Eric Stoltz) that is tough to watch at points and delectably evil at others.  Have fun with it.  And don’t judge too harshly… lest ye be judged.

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