Girl Interruopted
... After meeting Daisy (Murphy), a laxative junkie, Suzanna decides that everyone else is crazy except for her and that she doesn’t belong. A few more therapy sessions with Melvin go by and he thinks that she has borderline personality disorder. About this time to other girls show her the ropes, tonguing the medicines, knowing who to trade with, the girl’s trips that they take at night to go bowling in a secret hall and decides that the place is not so bad and maybe she just might be crazy like the rest of them. During a late night outing they sneak into Melvin’s office and she reads about borderline personalities only to discover that she fits the mold perfectly. Lisa calls herself and Suzanna “lifers” because the only way one can get out is if they tell all their secrets and if they do not have any secrets to confess they must be crazy and the doctors never let crazy people out. My favorite scene in the movie is when all the girls are at the ice cream parlor for Daisy’s last day. The professor’s wife that she slept with confronts her in front of all the girls. They sense her uneasiness and begin to bark, growl, scream and pretend to be a lot crazier than they really are. One of the girls’ names is Polly but they call her Torch. When she was eight she got very badly burned and now she is psychologically stuck in the mind of an eight year old forever but Suzanna does not think that this is a legitimate disorder and that Polly has caused herself to be this way. Toby, a boy she slept with before her commitment, comes by to see her and asks her to run away to Canada with him. She very forcefully resists and calls the people she lives with her friends and admits that she is very sick and needs this place in order for her to one day be able to rejoin the normal world. This is the first time in the entire movie that she admits to attempting suicide and that she really is a troubled person. John is a boy that works at the women’s ward that has a crush on Suzanna and does nice things for her. One night Polly was put in solitary confinement so Lisa and Suzanna get instruments from the music room and sing to her. John comes by and tells them to put the instruments away but instead gets dragged into the scene. Everyone falls asleep and the next morning Val (Goldberg), the mean head nurse, comes in and writes them up. John gets moved to another ward, Suzanna has to have a meeting with the head of the institution which really jump starts her recovery, and Lisa gets taken away and has to endure shock therapy, again. One day Lisa sneaks out of her building and comes to get Suzanna so they can escape and got to Florida. The girls hitch a ride to Daisy’s new house and bargain their way in with valium tablets. Lisa discovers ...