A ‘Delirious’ Time

“Lost and Delirious” matches a veteran director making her English-language debut with a young actress navigating the film road less traveled.

Lea Pool, the veteran Quebecois filmmaker better known on the international film festival circuit than in the United States, directed the story of three teenage girls discovering the intensity of passion and friendships at a boarding school. She cast Piper Perabo, best known for her role in last summer’s “Coyote Ugly,” in the pivotal role of Paulie.

Pool, who had always written or collaborated on the scripts for her earlier films such as “Anne Trister” and “Emporte-moi (Set Me Free),” was not actively seeking to do a film in English. She was offered “Lost and Delirious”--the film opens Friday in Los Angeles--for which an adaptation had already been penned by Toronto playwright Judith Thompson.

Pool was immediately drawn to the story of a young girl nicknamed Mouse (Mischa Barton) who is exiled to a boarding school by her father and stepmother and befriended by her two older roommates, Paulie and Tory (Jessica Pare), whom she soon discovers are lovers.

“Everything was in English and there was a lot of Shakespeare [quoted in the script], and so at one point I said it would be ridiculous to translate it into French. I was ready to try this, two new experiences: to work on the script of somebody else and to work in English,” says Pool.

There was also a commercial upside to the decision. “I know that it is easier to sell [the film’s distribution rights] in a lot of countries, not only the United States, but a lot of countries that prefer English-speaking films.”

Based on Susan Swan’s 1993 novel “The Wives of Bath,” “Lost and Delirious” premiered at Sundance in January and represents a type of film--”Boys Don’t Cry” is another obvious example--in which sexuality plays a key role but is not meant to be the defining element.

“I don’t want people to think it’s a small film because it’s between two women,” says Pool, many of whose previous films share the themes of homosexuality and the quest for true love. “To try and make a film that is a little bit more commercial with such a subject, it’s great. It feels to me that people are ready to see films like this.”

The subject of adolescence intrigued Pool. “It’s a period of life where everything is so intense, you are so vulnerable and courageous at the same time. The three actresses were in their own period of life, not very far from that. Even if [Perabo] has never felt, or had such a story, she can really understand it very well, and it was the same with [Barton and Pare]. I think to work with young actresses--they are very open, they are very free spirits--they don’t see the problem of a kind of story like this, and they just jump into the part.

“I know, for example, that Piper and Jessica--and this, I love--that young people are more open. For them, it was always a love story, they were never afraid to play these characters, to be afraid that in Hollywood, they will put a label on them.”

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A more traditional trajectory for the 23-year-old Perabo, after her roles in “Coyote Ugly” and also in “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle,” may have led her to the confines of major studio pictures, but her instincts have led her to seek more diverse roles.

“When I finish a picture, I’m usually looking for something that’s as close to 180 degrees away as I can get,” she says. “For me, it’s easier to begin a project that’s vastly different from where I was so I can start from scratch without having any [elements] of the character from before.”

Perabo had seen “Emporte-moi” at the New York Film Festival in fall 1999, shortly before receiving the script for “Lost and Delirious,” and had immediately marked Pool as a director with whom she hoped to work. “Her sense of time is really unique. There’s a sense of breadth, the characters, [the story’s] not so linear. It’s not just cut, cut, cut.”

The film was shot at Bishop’s University in Quebec’s Eastern Townships and provided an idyllic setting for the actors. “Our dressing rooms were dorm rooms and base camp was an empty classroom,” Perabo said, “and so Jessica, Mischa and I were all just roaming around the university in between shots and so we got to know each other.”

According to Pool, Perabo spent most of her free time at the university’s library. Someone had given her a recent biography of philosopher Michel Foucault and she decided that the “antiestablishment, brooding mind-set” was just right for playing Paulie, who identifies so readily with Shakespeare’s tragic characters. Foucault also led her to the French poet Rene Char, whom she later discovered Pool had quoted in her first feature, “La femme de l’hotel.”

Perabo, the avid reader, had brought Swan’s novel along with her, but was warned off reading it during filming by the director. “It’s a big, big change between the book and the script,” says Pool. For example, in the novel, Mouse has a hunchback and in the film she does not. Also, the film focuses on all three characters, while the book is Mouse’s story.

In turn, the film differs from the script. “It’s interesting when we discuss it, the three of us [Swan, Thompson and Pool]. We say we are like three women in a campfire, each one giving her version of the story and putting it together to make a new one. It’s really what Susan Swan brought [to the novel], and what Judith Thompson [brought to the script], and what I brought, together, that make this film,” Pool said. “I think it’s none of us, and all of us.”

The novel is set in 1963--coincidentally the same year as “Emporte-moi”--and coming off that film Pool was reluctant to do another period piece. Although there are computers visible in “Lost” and one character makes reference to it being the beginning of the 21st century, the environment of the boarding school is an unchanging one, and there is a timelessness to the film that is intentional.

“When I can do it, I try to make it as neutral as possible. Because it’s boarding school and nothing changes, they have all the same costumes and it’s a very old building and a very old-fashioned way of teaching. The issues in the film are still alive now and if we put it in the ‘60s or the ‘70s, we’d leave the impression that it is no longer like this, and I didn’t like this idea. To me, the problem is still there and I hope it would be easier in the future.”

Pool and Perabo, though of different generations, are each guided by the desire to remain true to their visions and make choices based on their beliefs.

In choosing projects on which to work, whether it be her own script or someone else’s, in French or in English, for Pool it is always the same. “If it doesn’t go with who I am or what I want to say, it would be impossible.”

As for Perabo, “It’s just about finding characters that interest me and I’m a little bit scared to play. Otherwise, if it doesn’t scare the pants off you, you’ve probably already done it.”