Director: Mary Harron

103min., R

Presented by: Co-sponsored by Trinity Institute for InterdisciplinaryStudies, Women and Gender Studies, Philosophy,Sociology and Theater & Dance

Post-film Q&A with Director Mary Harron

One of the most distinctive voices of the independent film movement of the last twenty-fiveyears, Mary Harron’s second film, in 2000, was American Psycho. The controversial Bret EastonEllis novel (1991) was considered unfilmable because of the violent sexual fantasies of its first-person narrator Patrick Bateman, but Harron’s film was widely hailed for handling the challenges with empathy and aesthetic precision, and for Christian Bale’s complex and nuanced performance as Bateman. In addition to nailing the tectonic cultural shifts of the 1980’s,American Psycho’s status as a classic feminist cult film derives from its uncanny prescience withregard to contemporary manifestations of violent and toxic masculinity.

 

In New York City in 1987, a handsome, young urban professional, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), lives a second life as a gruesome serial killer by night. The cast is filled by the detective (Willem Dafoe), the fiance (Reese Witherspoon), the mistress (Samantha Mathis), the coworker (Jared Leto), and the secretary (Chloë Sevigny). This is a biting, wry comedy examining the elements that make a man a monster.