I went and saw Gus Van Sant’s newest, Restless, on Saturday.  I’m not hugely knowledgeable on his body of work, but I remember Van Sant from his success in both indie/arthouse and mainstream venues (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Elephant, Milk); so after a good burger and a couple of beers from down the street, I walked into the theatre with a belly full of high hopes.

Restless is a story of two teens: Enoch (Henry Hopper) is a survivor of a car crash that took the lives of his parents; he likes to crash funerals. Annabel (Mia Wasikowska) is a terminal cancer patient that is given 3 months to live. The two fall in love. Ok, I didn’t know this was the synopsis of the movie, alright? I might have given it a second thought if I had known this. So its obviously some overtly tearjerker material.

The movie starts and my companion says, “its sort of like Juno.” Oh no. She’s right. Enoch and Annabel are hopelessly chic and quirky in their vintage wear and Van Sant seems more interested in this forced whimsy, referencing 60s French cinema and the Roaring 20s than in their character development, as Enoch devolves into a wretched Holden Caufield-type character who cannot face what he has fetishized. Van Sant basically uses all the other characters as a way for him to get over the death of his parents, Annabel being some kind of helpless radiant sacrificial lamb.

The film plods along, clunky with its sugariness, until Enoch has supposedly redeemed himself. After a ghost puts him in the hospital. Oh yeah, his best friend is the ghost of a Kamikaze pilot. Should have seen Moneyball instead.