A review of the movie Lost and Delirious

 

『She Loved, and Tried to Bear It All』

🎥 Movie Overview

🎬 Title: Lost and Delirious (2001) – Lost Era
🌍 Country: 🇨🇦 Canada
🎞️ Genre: Drama / Romance / Teen
🗓️ Production & Release: -
⏳ Runtime: 102 minutes
📢 Director: Léa Pool
📚 Source Material: Susan Swan, The Wives of Bath

👩‍💼 Cast: Piper Perabo – Paulie Oster
Jessica Paré – Victoria “Tori” Moller
Mischa Barton – Mary “Mouse” Bedford

🧩 In-Depth Story Exploration (Spoilers)

🌿 "A Dreamlike Beginning, Innocent First Love"

Mary enters a new boarding school and, through her roommates Paulie and Tori, witnesses for the first time the emotions, secrets, and fragile love outside her sheltered world.

Paulie and Tori are lovers. They whisper under the night sky on the rooftop and share intimacy beside sleeping Mary. Yet society does not allow their love to exist openly. When Tori’s younger sibling discovers their relationship, Tori distances herself from Paulie to protect their secret.

💬 “The Only Person I Loved Was Paulie, But My Family Saw That Love as Shame.”

Tori tearfully asks Mary to “help Paulie,” while Paulie feels a mix of endless longing, anger, and sorrow toward Tori. The scene where Paulie tends to and releases the falcon symbolizes her yearning for freedom and her fragmented self. She holds untamed emotions and gradually breaks under a world unable to bear that love.

💔 "Love Unhidden, Yet Misunderstood by the World"

Paulie loves openly and expresses her feelings passionately. Her confessions become poetry, her anger becomes tears. Yet Tori chooses the societal norm of ‘normality’ under social and familial pressure. This love serves as salvation for one and a threat to survival for the other. Mary, as the objective observer, is also transformed amidst the pain and beauty created by their love.

🌌 "The Forest, the Falcon, and Freedom That Could Not Fly"

Falcon: Symbolizes Paulie herself—wounded, rescued, trained, yet ultimately flying away.

Forest and Sky, Lake: The only escape within confined spaces.

Paulie’s Duel Challenge: A final attempt to assert herself after her self-esteem shatters.

Paulie neither hid nor packaged her love. But as such love clashed with the world, she was broken because of her very capacity to love.

🦋 Emotional Resonance and Significance

🎥 The Absoluteness of Love vs. Social Pressure

The core of the film lies in the catastrophic conflict arising when Paulie’s absolute love is rejected by Tori due to realistic fears.

Category Refusal: Paulie refuses to confine her love within the social category of ‘lesbian’. To her, it is a pure ideal transcending gender, shared only with Tori. This adolescent purity and uncompromising idealism fuel Paulie’s actions.

Betrayal and Madness: Seeing Tori deny the relationship and date a boy, Paulie perceives the absolute value of love trampled and exhibits destructive behavior. Challenging Tori’s boyfriend to a duel in fencing attire or reciting Shakespeare in the library as declarations of love demonstrates how frustrated romanticism transforms into gestures of madness.

Absence of Adults: Despite the boarding school setting, most adults are portrayed as incompetent or passive. The headmaster teaching Shakespearean tragedies yet failing to respond to the students’ real emotional crises implies that adolescents’ intense emotions lie beyond adult control.

💔 Tragic Ending and Its Significance

The film’s climax depicts Paulie’s extreme actions and tragic ending. She identifies with the falcon she tended, linking her longing for freedom to loss.

• Glamorized Loss (Controversial Trope): Paulie’s tragic ending was criticized for following the cliché that 'gay characters end tragically'.
• Romantic Sublimity: Yet the film portrays it as the ultimate frustration of sublime romanticism. Paulie refuses to compromise with the world, choosing a tragic fate to ‘fly for freedom’ like the falcon rather than corrupt her ideals. This was the final resistance of a teenage romanticist unable to reconcile love lost with reality.

Lost and Delirious captures the emotional 'loss and delirium' of adolescence. The film vividly recalls the pain when the all-or-nothing belief in love we once held shatters against the immovable wall of reality.

🎯 Personal Rating

💕 Love Scene Level: ♥♥♥♥
⭐ Rating: ★★★★★