Wristcutters: A Love Story

Director: Goran Dukic Goran Dukic

Overview

Relegated to a forlorn afterlife of unsmiling lost souls and melancholy drifters as a result of committing suicide in the mortal realm, a heartbroken young man sets out to find the girl who inspired his final act of self-destruction after learning that she too has taken her own life in director Goran Dukic's adaptation of Etgar Keret's darkly comic novella Kneller's Happy Campers. A likeable young man despite his depressive disposition, Zia (Patrick Fugit) puts blade to wrist only to find that the pain of life doesn't end with the coming of death. Now trapped in a bleak metaphysical landscape populated entirely by suicide victims blearily searching for the joys that eluded them in the physical realm, Zia soon learns that the love is one of the latest arrivals in the dreary land of the dead. As Zia sets out to locate his ill-fated former companion and experience the joys that eluded the couple in life, he is joined in his quest by a lovelorn Russian rocker named Eugene (Shea Wigham) and an accidental tourist named Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), who's looking for a way out of the sorrowful stir.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/25/2008
UPC:	0031398226987
Original Release:	2006
Rating:	R
Source:	LIONSGATE - 600000-AEC LGE
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:28:00
Sales rank:	29,100

Special Features

Closed Caption; Audio commentary with director Goran Dukic, actors Patrick Fugit and Mikal Portnoi Lazarev, and producer Tatiana Kelly; Making the final cut: The Wristcutters journey; Deleted scenes; Director's storyboard look-in; Patrick's on-set photo gallery

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Patrick Fugit	Zia
Shannyn Sossamon	Mikal
Shea Whigham	Eugene
Tom Waits	Kneller
Will Arnett	Messiah
Leslie Bibb	Desiree
John Hawkes	Yan
Mikal P. Lazarev	Nanuk
Sarah Roemer	Rachel
Abraham Benrubi	Eric
Azura Skye	Tania
Nick Offerman	Max
Mark Boone Junior	Mike
Jake Busey	Brian
Clayne Crawford	Jim
Anthony Azizi	Hassan
Mary Gleason	Eugene's Mother
Bobby Johnston	Composer

Technical Credits

Goran Dukic

Goran Dukic	Director,Screenwriter
Adam Sherman	Producer
Chris Coen	Producer
Tatiana Kelly	Producer
Mikal P. Lazarev	Producer
Shannon Makhanian	Casting
Jonathan Schwartz	Executive Producer
Lee Ascher	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

For viewers inclined to let a movie's title dictate their interest, Wristcutters: A Love Story will be quite the surprise -- if, that is, they make it past the title to an actual viewing. Yes, it's about suicide victims trapped in a purgatory where they literally can't smile. But it's also whimsical, upbeat, and life-affirming, and the title -- a change from both the graphic novel (Kamikaze Pizza) and short story (Kneller's Happy Campers) -- perfectly encapsulates the movie's unusual duality. Its world view is plenty acerbic, but the film is also sweet enough to attract fans who'd normally give suicide movies a wide berth. In the world of Wristcutters, a person's decision to "off" is not punished by any ordinary Christian idea of Hell; rather, he or she is suddenly plunged into a shabby facsimile of the regular world, where everything is just a little dingier (and a lot less populated). It's not actually such a terrible place to spend eternity, especially since their former hopelessness has transformed into something hovering between resignation and indifference. As a bonus, this land is touched with the occasion minor miracle as well. Debut writer-director Goran Dukic seems to have an innate sense how to make these characters believably suicidal, but also grudgingly likable, as they compare stories, make wry observations, and still bear some evidence of their fatal self-inflected wounds. The film is also an excellent showcase for its amiable leads, Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, and Shea Whigham -- the last of whom plays a musician modeled after Eugene Hutz, lead singer of Gogol Bordello, the gypsy punk band whose music provides this film's perfect soundtrack. Dukic's mission doesn't seem to be anything so magnanimous as preventing people from killing themselves, but Wristcutters: A Love Story is so pleasing that it might just do that anyway.