The Rules of Attraction-a work of art essays

The Rules of Attraction-a work of art essays Many movies charm us with their age-old tale of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, both live happily ever after. The Rules of Attraction however, does anything but this. Rules is not the typical teeny-bopper gross out college comedy. It is a merciless and honest look into the reality of the lives of three individuals. The first, Sean Bateman (James van Der Beek), is a drug dealer with an outstanding debt to his junkie: $3,000 to be exact. Sean is violently harrassed by the dealer and his cohorts and deals with his stress in the only ways that he knows how-through his addictions. I've got to get some more pot and get laid, Sean thinks as he smokes a joint offered to him by character number two. Paul Dent, character number two, is a homosexual looking for love and hoping to find it in Sean. In the scene previously mentioned, Paul begins to fantasize about having sex with Sean as he smokes Paul's pot. The third character, Lauren (Shannyn Sossoman), is a virgin girl who has re sisted the partying life by looking at photographs of STD's when faced with inviations. What she desires is to lose her virginity to the right guy. Lauren meets Sean in a deserted hallway and the two begin to talk. They both begin to develop feelings for each other, but neither one is vulnerable enough to act on them. They both attempt to find each other at various times, but unavailability and mistakes keep them apart. Meanwhile, Paul must go on a trip to visit with his mother, his ex-boyfriend and his mother. Slowly the three become more and more separated as we watch their lives split apart in opposite directions until the end of the film. Rules of Attraction contains explicit, and graphic sexual, homosexual, and drug content but in no way glorifies any of it. There is nothing wanton or gratuitous about this film. This movie hits hard like a knife going into the heart of American college society and presents us with a picture that, while it is not pret...