Ghost World

15

4/5

GHOST World is based on an American comic and can be watched almost like a series of comic strips. The film starts with the high school graduation of best friends Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson).

A school leaving rap acts as a bridge between education and the real world, to the amusement of both the characters and the audience.

The film follows the two women in a series of sketches which highlight the most interesting, funny and tedious aspects of suburban life and the characters it produces.

However, their friendship and their identity is tested as they try to find a place for themselves in the duplicity of modern American suburbia.

Their bonds become strained as the very things which most amused them while they were at school start to strangle them as they become mere cogs in the system of adult life.

The world in which they find themselves is one of dead-end jobs, strip malls and an unhindered materialism.

Rebecca begins work in a cafe and starts to save for the flat they were going to get together.

But Enid has an inability to hold down a job, mostly because she is too honest to customers. She starts spending her time with Seymour (Steve Buscemi), an alienated record collector she feels sorry for.

At first Enid tries to find Seymour a girlfriend because he seems so sad to her but she ends up falling for him in the process.

As Enid attaches little value to any of her relationships, she soon finds herself on her own in a world which has little time for "freaks" and "weirdos" like herself.

This is a film which will be enjoyed by those who have ever been into cynical comics or those who sometimes question the frothy cappuccino-culture of middle America.

November 14, 2001 13:23

John Higginson