[devilshaircut]

I loved this book and I loved the movie too. I really like how it was sort of marketed/positioned as a Leonardo DiCaprio teen movie but ultimately when you see it, the film has a much darker, serious tone like the book.

The trailer, as I recall, contained things like the idyllic/titular beach, pop music of the time (Moby, All Saints), and a beautiful girl (Francoise) - all the trappings of a teen movie. But when you see the movie, it feels much more like Heart of Darkness. The themes of what it means to be civilized, isolation and madness, and travel and foreignness are all fairly sober topics and are perpendicular to what you find in most teen movies.

I would say of the films I saw in that time in my life, it was among the most mind altering.