It's a Beautiful Dream. To Be Cremated: Kill Me Later (2001)

Continuing with our Girl Power series, we have Dana Lustig's 2001 film Kill Me Later.

Of all the films covered not only in this series, but on this blog as a whole, this one is probably the most obscure. Leonard Maltin even placed it on his list “Fifty Films That Got Away: Movies You Really Ought to See."

I myself had only found it by chance while flipping through the channels on TV.

Luckily, the title alone of this film was intriguing enough for me to stop.

The film focuses on the life of a woman named Shawn, played to perfection by Selma Blair.

It seems that everything in Shawn's life is going absolutely horribly, and it's been that way for most likely her entire life.

On this day in particular, Shawn finds out that her boyfriend, who is also her married boss, has to cancel a trip for which Shawn has already bought them tickets, her father is so focused on his new baby that he cannot spare a five-minute phone conversation with her, and finally, once she gets to work, she discovers her boyfriend/boss' wife is pregnant.

Oh yeah. And her goldfish dies.

It is not only these events, but something more, something that has pervaded her life, that leads Shawn to the decision to kill herself. She goes to the top of the roof of the bank she works at with the intent to jump.

Photo credit: Haro

Meanwhile, the bank is being robbed by three men, one of whom runs to the roof. Using her as a way to get the police off his back, the man, named Charlie and played by the charismatic Max Beesley, takes Shawn “hostage” with a single promise.

If you help me out now, I'll kill you later.

And thus begins the journey of two polar opposite characters, a happy-go-lucky man without a care in the world and a depressed woman angry at the world. The film tells the story of how the two of them come to form a partnership of sorts, offering each other a sense of understanding that neither has ever experienced.

The film as a whole is one of those rare gems. Not only are the lead characters realistic and the plotline engaging, but everything else seems to come together like a well-oiled machine.

There are subplots involving the secondary characters throughout the film, all somehow relating to the main plot.

Photo credit: Bergman Lustig Productions

The cinematography is creative with transitions from close-ups and wide-shots and from slow-motion back to real time.  

One of my favorite sequences in the film occurs when the two leads are simply talking and getting to know each other better. The nearby clock is shown to be going backwards, and as the dialogue is heard, shots from different moments in time are shown out of order. This really captures the feeling of the moment, as well as reminds the audience of the importance of time, as the entire film takes place within a 24-hour period.

In the end, Lustig's film is a patchwork of elements that come together perfectly to tell a good story.

A story of a woman who, through a chance encounter, finds the power within herself she had long thought disappeared.

Coming up next in our Girl Power series:  Brokedown Palace (1999).

To return to the beginning of the series, click here.