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This is not a love story. It’s not quite a coming-of-age story, either. This is really a story about danger, and the choice one must make to either face it, or turn away. It’s also a queer story, though it’s often overlooked as such.

The story in question is Girl Interrupted, the 1999 film starring Winona Ryder and based on the novel of the same name. Ryder, who was also a producer on the film, plays the main character, Susanna, an 18-year-old girl who checks into a mental hospital in 1967. Angelina Jolie plays Lisa, a charismatic young woman diagnosed as a sociopath. The role was coveted by many of Hollywood’s best and brightest, and the likes of Alanis Morissette and Courtney Love vied for the part at one point. It’s an incredibly rich role, and it’s clear Jolie was the only correct choice.

Though Ryder was the film’s biggest star and the main character, it was Jolie who received the most acclaim, going on to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the role. With this accolade, it would appear Jolie became the first out queer person to win an Oscar and the first out queer person to win an Oscar for playing a queer role (though there are certainly those that would contest the latter distinction). Historical records like these tend to tell an incomplete story, but Jolie’s work in the film is worthy of further consideration nonetheless. In this case, her public persona matters almost as much as her performance in the film. Indeed, Girl, Interrupted is the third film in what we might call Jolie’s 1990s trilogy of queer classics¹ (following Foxfire and Gia), and the film perfectly encapsulates the power of these archetypes.

When Susanna first arrives at Claymoore, the mental hospital in question, she believes that she’s not insane and doesn’t really belong there. She initially treats her fellow residents with a mixture of revulsion and curiosity, with the latter reaction winning out as she gets to know them and they become friends. She eventually begins to empathize with them, even telling her incredulous boyfriend "If they're insane, I'm insane.” The most fascinating resident, by a long shot, is Lisa. She is beloved – and sometimes hated – by Claymoore’s residents and staff. She’s both the popular girl and the bully, and she has the ability to make anyone she’s talking to feel special when she lavishes attention on them. Lisa switches from protagonist to antagonist throughout the film, and it’s never clear which direction her chaos will lead. She’s an alluring enigma. 

The woman who previously occupied Susanna’s room was clearly a favorite of Lisa’s, and Lisa is initially disgusted with Susanna for taking her place. Eventually, however, they grow close. Susanna falls under Lisa’s spell, but, believing she’s saner than her fellow residents, feels certain that Lisa can’t hurt her. They share their first (and only) kiss while riding in a van after escaping from Claymoore one evening. It’s delicate, and intimate, and is never spoken of again. Things quickly fall apart after this. They go to stay with Daisy (a brilliant Brittany Murphy), a woman suffering from anorexia who’s probably being molested by her father. Lisa says a series of cruel things to Daisy that ostensibly drive her to suicide (though Lisa contests this chain of events), and this is Susanna’s breaking point. She can’t go down this road anymore – it’s too dangerous, and she’s not a dangerous person, not really.

That’s exactly what Lisa represents: danger. There’s something very queer about this. Though we don’t see her explicitly express attraction to anyone but Susanna (and perhaps Jamie, the woman who previously occupied Susanna’s room), Lisa is figured as queer nonetheless. Lisa doesn’t see herself as gay or as a dyke, though she uses the latter word to disparagingly describe others. The medical understanding of queerness at the time makes this distinction all the more important. Homosexuality was still classified as a disorder in 1967, when the film takes place, and remained so until 1974 when it was replaced with a new diagnosis relating to distress over one’s sexual orientation. This diagnostic, or others like it, remained in place until 2013. 

Cynthia (​​Jillian Armenante) represents the consequences of this diagnosis and has been placed at Claymoore presumably because of her own homosexuality. When Cynthia tries to argue that she’s a sociopath just like Lisa, Lisa bluntly responds: “No, you’re a dyke.” Lisa also refers to Vanessa Redgrave’s character, Dr. Wick, as “Dr. Dyke,” for reasons unknown. All of this is to say the specter of homosexuality certainly exists in the film, though Lisa tends to separate herself from such matters. And yet, Lisa is dangerous in a queer way, and queer in a dangerous way. She flirts with all the women of Claymoore, and they respond, regardless of their own (dis)interest in women. Jolie is utterly transfixing in the role, and because of her undeniable charm, Lisa is more threatening than anyone at Claymoore, both to those inside and outside of the institution. Her sensual confidence is extremely powerful, and she mainly uses her powers of seduction (or destruction) on other women.

The idea of Jolie as a dangerous figure extends beyond just the roles she played during this era, though her choice of parts was certainly a factor in this overall perception of her. Jolie played dangerous queer figures in both Foxfire and Gia, and even ostensibly non-queer films like Hackers and The Bone Collector saw her playing the kind of feisty, independent-yet-vulnerable types she's become known for. When you look at coverage of Jolie in the late ‘90s, there is a very clear picture being drawn. A 1999 Rolling Stone profile titled “The Devil In Miss Angelina Jolie” discusses her tattoos, blood, death, the fact that she has a collection of knives that she sometimes uses during sex, and of course, the size of her breasts.² Despite the morbid (and sexist) picture these details paint, Jolie maintains that she’s not a dark person herself, though she knows that does seem to be the public’s perception of her. 

A lot has been said about Jolie’s personal connection to the ‘90s characters she played, and Jolie herself concedes that there is a throughline here. Speaking with the Hollywood Foreign Press in 1999, Jolie discussed the idea that people who are different should be separated from society. “According to that criteria, I should be locked up. To be honest, there’s a lot of Lisa in me. I certainly have been told a lot of times that I’m dark or that people think I’m crazy. I didn’t think that Lisa was insane, that she deserved to be locked up,” Jolie declared. The director of Gia, Michael Cristofer, once noted that Jolie saw a lot of herself in the lead role, but the main difference between the two women was that Jolie has an outlet for her outsized passions – acting – while Gia did not. 

Jolie’s own sexuality certainly factors into this conversation as well. Jolie has always been open about her bisexuality. Her most well-known same-gender relationship was with model and actor Jenny Shimizu, who she says she “probably would have married” had she not met first husband Johnny Lee Miller. When an interviewer suggested that “she is the actress most straight women want to have sex with,” she responded that “she was the actress most likely to have sex with them.” She’s often quoted as having said “I always play women I would date,” though I can’t find a source for that statement. Jolie’s openness about sexual matters has certainly contributed to this idea of her as wild or unpredictable, and this image also makes her seem destined for a role like Lisa. 

Indeed, this sense of danger surrounding Jolie – whether real or imagined – works to her advantage in the film. In his rather lukewarm review of the movie, critic Roger Ebert only had complimentary things to say about Jolie, noting that she “is emerging as one of the great wild spirits of current movies, a loose cannon who somehow has deadly aim.” Doug Wick, a producer on Girl, Interrupted, favorably compared Jolie to Jack Nicholson, remarking that the intensity that they both possess is ultimately very alluring in nature. Unfortunately, when it comes to Jolie’s queer roles, this powerful magnetism is not enough to save her, and in all three cases, the threat she represents is eventually neutralized.

Lisa is not alone, of course, and her counterpart, Susanna, is similarly recognizable. The alliance between Jolie and Ryder – two icons of ‘90s counterculture – is highly potent. Ryder, who often embodied a stylish sense of androgyny in this era, is mostly known for playing sardonic outsiders. Though these characters are, for the most part, ostensibly heterosexual, her sense of style and attitude has long endeared her to sapphic fans.³ Jolie, on the other hand, had a kind of rockstar femininity during this era, though she has since transitioned to something more akin to old Hollywood glamor. Jolie was a different kind of outsider, one who seemed to come by this persona naturally, without any of Ryder’s endearing awkwardness. Both characters – and both actors – came from an outlook that is queer by society's standards, but the bearing of these outlooks are quite different. 

Jolie and Ryder each do their archetypal “things” in the film, and they do it very well. The difference is that Jolie’s tends to be much more engaging and dynamic here. In truth, Lisa – and, by extension, Jolie – drives much of the action of the film despite the fact that she doesn’t possess a narrative voice. Susanna is listless and ambivalent, as she tells Dr. Wick, while Lisa is electric and fiery. While Susanna accepts her fate without so much as raising a finger, Lisa fights back, displaying more agency than any other character in the film. Without her, the plot would be even more listless than it already is. Director James Mangold has said one of the biggest changes he made to the original script was to focus more on the character of Lisa, which was clearly the right choice, although it does mean we get less of the other secondary characters. 

In Jolie’s hands, one of the most fascinating aspects of Lisa is the question of whether or not she has the ability to care about other people. There are two opposing scenes that emphasize this question, and they are the very best scenes in the film. The first is when she drives Daisy to suicide, and seemingly shows no remorse for her actions. Brittany Murphy is just as brilliant as Jolie in this scene, crumpling from the inside out but trying to stand tall while Lisa digs the knife in further and further. This moment would indicate that Lisa’s diagnosis as a sociopath is correct, with no room for qualifications.

The second scene comes near the end of the film, when Lisa reads Susanna’s journals out loud to some of the other girls. Susanna fumes at this violation of privacy, but Lisa claims that she’s just playing the villain as Susanna has always wanted her to. Not only is Lisa acutely aware of how she’s perceived, but she also reveals here how she maintains her own agency in regard to her behavior. In response to Lisa’s betrayal, Susanna hurls insults at Lisa, telling her she’s dead inside and she will never be free. Lisa breaks down after Susanna tells her this, and there is despair in her eyes, if not remorse. Jolie’s magnificence here is in portraying Lisa’s ferocity and vulnerability simultaneously, indicating that the two conditions can co-exist within one complicated mind. Lisa can’t be an irredeemable villain, at least not if Susanna’s meant to learn from her not-so-insane insanity. 

It’s something of a letdown, but in the end, Susanna goes back on her proclamation of solidarity with the residents of Claymoore. She separates herself from the other women, severing the bond she once felt with them. Lisa, in all her thrilling vitality, is left to rot. Ebert sagely describes what’s so disappointing about the film’s conclusion. “They're insane, and she isn't, and that deprives the film of the kind of subterranean energy that fueled its obvious inspiration, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” he writes. Lisa is forever doomed, something like Gia and perhaps something like Legs from Foxfire. She’s essentially put down, and by the time Susanna says her final goodbye, she seems to have given up entirely. 

The only way Lisa’s energy can be contained, it seems, is if she’s restrained in a hospital bed. Her countenance has dimmed almost completely by this point, though the glittering sparkle behind Jolie’s eyes shines just beneath the surface. As Susanna explains in the final narration, she thinks of the women of Claymoore often, but the effect of her experiences has been muted considerably. She drives away from Claymoore with a pleasant smile on her face, while the decidedly unpleasant Lisa fades away into non-existence. Lisa once told Susanna that insanity is a gift, “that it lets you see the truth.” The main problem is that not many people are willing to sit with this truth, and Susanna proves that she is not one of them after all. Danger averted.