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Heathers

Heathers

Michael Lehmann

  • 1989
  • USA
  • Dark comedy
  • 1h43mn
  • Original version with French subtitles
  • Color
Veronica, who tries to fit in at highschool, but hates her schoolmates’s stupidity, meets J.D., a rebel who will shatter her relationship to the social game by “suiciding” the dumbest and most popular teens. Unfortunately, once dead, they become less stupid—and even more popular.
Heathers hasn’t usurped its cult film status. This teen movie, that goes off the rails from the very start, remains an unequalled comedy about acting out, where the superego no longer exists to suppress murderous impulses. “Dear Diary, My teen angst has a bodycount”, writes Veronica. An anarchist though responsible firebrand - touching upon nihilism, Heathers execrates a materialistic society obsessed by appearances that gives birth to many sheep and a few monsters, ten years before the Columbine tragedy.

Adilkhan Yerzahnov

I first watched Fatal Games (Heathers) in my youth and immediately took note of Slater's character. He's essentially an anarchist and a terrorist who declares war on mediocrity. A rare kind of antihero—one we'll never see in today's era of political correctness.

I fell in love with the music, which always arrives at the perfect moment. The synth-pop defines the film's stylistic structure: cheerful, hopeless, ironic, and lethally dangerous.

Beneath the entertaining surface lies a serious idea—nihilism—and an uncomfortable question posed to modern society.

How should we respond to this kind of protagonist? The film's immorality is both hypnotic and terrifying.

And of course, its form—at times, it breaks free from the teen movie framework and enters the realm of poetry.

If one film could express the entire spirit of the 1980s, it would be Fatal Games.

Screenings

09/09 • 14h45 • Screen 300
Session presented by Adilkhan Yerzhanov

Credits

  • With : Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker...
  • Screenplay : Daniel Waters
  • Photography : Francis Kenny
  • Editing : Norman Hollyn
  • Music by : David Newman
  • Production : Denise Di Novi