Bret Easton Ellis’s novel The Rules of Attraction is decadent, breathless fiction from a man who had intimate knowledge of a desperate time. Ellis, who had not yet graduated from Bennington College when he wrote the book, knew, loved, lived his stories—and blasted them onto the page like vomit. The novel presents the lives of three enmeshed characters, Lauren Hynde, Sean Bateman, and Paul Denton (played in the film by Shannyn Sossamon, James Van Der Beek, and Ian Somerhalder, respectively) as iconic postmodern subjects, intensely unaware as they stumble through their dysfunctional lives at the fictional Camden College. As a reader, you are disgusted by your own identification with the characters; whether or not you know a Sean, a Paul, a Lauren—or went to college with one—you feel a sordid pull through the pages.

Basically one long rant lacking in punctuation of any kind, the book presents a significant problem to well-intentioned filmmakers. Rambling, overlapping thought processes place you inside the text to think and live as the characters themselves. Unless told entirely in montage and voiceover, this kind of storytelling makes a rough transition to the screen—and requires a great deal of rewriting to achieve the same kind of feel.

An adaptation of this kind would take a master of misguided desperation rivaling Bret Easton Ellis—Roger Avary may well be that man. Avary, who wrote and directed the effective, heroin chic Killing Zoë (which turned Julie Delpy into an iconic masturbatory image for her memorable straddling of Eric Stoltz), was a video store clerk with Tarantino, co-wrote the rambling tome that became Pulp Fiction, attempted to morph The Rules of Attraction into a filmic “tutorial on the postmodern condition.” He could taste the sweet irony of pushing Van Der Beek, Sossamon, and Jessica Biel (as Laura Holleran), who made careers out of being fresh-faced WB pop icons, to see themselves as the symbolic, essentially empty subjects of a sick theoretical joke.

As cinematographer Robert Brinkman states in the Anatomy of a Scene DVD special feature, the filmmakers intended this to be a serious meditation on the “mundane disconnection between people.” Unfortunately, the earnestness doesn’t connote credibility and the film never manages to become more than mere satire, its good intentions dripping from every frame like Van Der Beek’s pre-ejaculate. The sweetness of the actors redirects this desperation for meaningfulness until it becomes a kind of game rather than a starkly revealing exposé. This game can itself be funny—even outrageously so—but is a different project than the originally intended “tutorial.”

Moments of the film do offer the necessary tragicomic debacle: Wonder Years’s Fred Savage is mind-boggling as a tighty-whitey-wearing heroin-addict who, when confronted with the difficulty of playing a clarinet while high and smoking a cigarette, sticks his ciggie in his belly-button and toots away. Russell Sams is outstanding in a tragically brief performance as Richard (aka “Dick!”), one of Paul’s childhood friends. Swigging whiskey while dancing in his underwear to George Michael’s “Faith” and not-so-surreptitiously shoving his foot in Somerhalder’s crotch while seated opposite the un-flappable Faye Dunaway, Sams steals the show. He brings post-teenage angst and misdirection painfully to life in a portrayal of which the more earnest stars should be rightfully jealous. For straight-up cracked-out page-to-screen, fast forward to the “Victor” chapter—Ellis’s portrayal of a desperate playboy in Europe is translated into grainy video evoking a driven listlessness, while including a cameo by Paul Oakenfold.

In a very real way, the commentaries and the other bonus features informatively articulate why this film failed. Avary continuously re-affirms his conviction that “the real journey is watching where you’ve already been, and knowing what’s coming.” (I’ve always found that makes things boring.) Editor Sharron Rutter finds solace in the idea that magically, perspective is given to the viewer on a celluloid platter. “[The characters’] paths are crossing, ever so slightly, and sometimes you’re re-experiencing time, you’re reversing time, and then playing it forward again from a different perspective.” (This noxious repetition ruins the first 15 minutes of the film.) The banal banter of the stars during their “revolving door” commentaries falls victim to the same hollow honesty that marrs the entire project. Actors Shannyn Sossamon and Eric Smezanda, and producer Jeremiah Samuels acknowledge that the opening party scene was shot on September 11, 2001—but reaffirm that despite actors and crew members openly crying off set, there existed a commitment to the project which superceded even national tragedy. Thus crew and actors back up Avary’s compulsions like a well-trained Greek chorus. By the time you get to the segment from the Sundance Channel’s well-regarded Anatomy of a Scene, the exuberant crew is a dull clip from a broken record, shouting from the rooftops that this was an honest project, dammit!

Satire often functions by allowing a fresh positioning of the viewer/reader, introducing a badly-needed new perspective. Unfortunately for The Rules of Attraction, all is lost in earnestness. The film simply allows no space for the identification or rejection that the act of reading tacitly constructs. Carrot Top says it best in his completely irrelevant audio commentary: “I’m having a hard time focusing on [the film]…All I can think about is [Jessica Biel] getting fucked by the football team.” —Prema Trettin