"I think only stupid people have good relationships," explains Enid (Thora Birch), the teenage cynic at the heart of Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World.
From the way she talks, you would think she had cornered the market on marginality. And she seems to think so, too, until she meets up with a socially maladjusted older man named Seymour (Steve Buscemi), who knows more about out-of-print records than he does about women.
Adapted from a comic book by Daniel Clowes, the film follows Enid and friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) from their high school graduation and into their grapplings with young adulthood.
But as the teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait also demonstrates, all bets are off when the mortarboards go flying, and the alliances of high school often succumb to the withering heat of the reality that follows.
When they are not dreaming of renting their first apartment, the jaded pair offer wry, angst-ridden commentary on the postmodern world they inhabit.
We sense, however, that Rebecca is only half-heartedly following Enid's despairing lead and seems reasonably content in the commodified environment of the would-be Starbucks that employs her.
Enid, conversely, tries her hand behind the concession stand at a movie theater but can't quite get past the artifice of yellow "sludge" masquerading as popcorn butter.
A great deal of the film revolves around Enid's relationship with Seymour and the distance it breeds between her and Rebecca.
The two respond to a personal ad he has placed, just to mock him from a safe distance, but they follow him home, and Enid makes a connection with this man she sees as a fellow misfit.
A film that relies as heavily on its tone and texture as Ghost World does require patience from its audience and is difficult to describe. Scrape away its cynical exterior, and the film reveals a wealth of genuine humanity beneath its surface.
Indeed, the dichotomy between the external and internal seems a prominent theme. Enid mocks those who rely on external validation, and yet her self-reliance does little to make her any happier than the subjects of her ridicule.
Raised by an ineffectual single father, she seems adrift and wounded, using her caustic wit and artistic talents as defense mechanisms.
Zwigoff's film is far from cheerful, but he helms it with the same observant precision he brought to Crumb, the riveting documentary about cartoonist R. Crumb (whose daughter's artwork doubles for Enid's in this film).
As Enid, Thora Birch deftly continues her ascent out of children's fare, and Scarlett Johansson brings both gravity and intelligence to a role that would have suffered without them. And as always, Steve Buscemi fascinates.
The film ends ambiguously, thought-provokingly. If my understanding of the final scene is valid, the movie offers some recognition of the futility — and fatality — of cynical despair, while refusing to offer false hope against it.
The film shows us people floating like apparitions through empty lives, but its mission is not to console us.
There are ghosts of a sort in this film's world, but not all of them are dead.
Grade: A-
R, 111 minutes
