July 19–26, 2001
movie shorts
Set Me Free director Léa Pool takes a precipitous slide down the crap chute with this laughable stab at commercial lesbian cinema. Coyote Ugly’s Piper Perabo (apparently passing as a "name") plays a wild-hearted tomboy (she trains hawks in the woods) whose relationship with a soft-willed pretty girl (Stardom’s Jessica Paré) becomes the scandal of an all-girls boarding school. Young Mischa Barton (Lawn Dogs) plays the wide-eyed freshman who watches as Paré plays it straight under parental pressure, and Perabo squints her eyes like she’s gonna do something crazy. Pool’s attempt to spice up the utterly pedestrian story with slap-in-the-face symbolism only makes the whole mess more ridiculous.