History YMMV / GirlInterrupted

* {{Narm}} : Many of the arguments and histrionic outbursts can be perceived as this, after a couple of viewings. What's dramatic on the first viewing might induce some eye-rolling in subsequent ones.

*** Ironically, [[FridgeBrilliance Lisa might actually have Borderline Personality Disorder]]. Based on what's now understood about BPD, Susanna barely qualifies if she does at all, but Lisa is practically a textbook case: people with BPD struggle to empathize with others (which is often misread as sociopathy or narcissism even though it's not actually the same complete lack of empathy present in those conditions), often exhibit impulsive and risky behavior even to their own detriment, have an extreme fear of abandonment, and experience bouts of sudden, inappropriate anger -- all of which we see in Lisa over the course of the movie. Threatening suicide when faced with a threat of abandonment, which Lisa does several times, is also a behavior that comes up relatively frequently with BPD.

** Ironically, it might actually be ''Lisa'' [[FridgeBrilliance who has Borderline Personality Disorder]]. Based on what's now understood about BPD, Susanna barely qualifies if she does at all, but Lisa is practically a textbook case: people with BPD struggle to empathize with others (not to the same extent as sociopathy or narcissism, which would explain Lisa's ability to care about Susanna and Jamie, but it can often be misread as those), exhibit impulsive and risky behavior, have an extreme fear of abandonment, and experience bouts of sudden, inappropriate anger -- all of which we see in Lisa over the course of the movie. Threatening suicide when faced with a threat of abandonment is also a behavior that comes up relatively frequently with BPD.

** Is Lisa actually a sociopath? She fits a lot of the criteria, but the fact that she seems to genuinely care about Susanna (and [[TheGhost Jamie]]) in her own, deeply twisted way could be used to argue that she ''does'' have some degree of concern for others, and thus isn't a true sociopath. Plus, it was the sixties -- misdiagnoses, especially with young women, weren't exactly uncommon. (Hell, they're not uncommon ''now''.) And, of course, that raises the question, if Lisa isn't a sociopath, what ''is'' she?

* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: The ice cream parlor scene, specifically where Lisa stands up for Susanne after the wife of the professor Susanne had a brief affair with threatens her.

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: The ice cream parlor scene, specifically where Lisa stands up for Susanne after the wife of the professor Susanne had a brief affair with threatens her.

%%* JerkassWoobie: Daisy; Lisa.
%%The above examples have been commented out for being zero-context. Do not uncomment them without expanding them.
* LesYay: Lisa and Susanna. Lisa bringing Susanna into her circle and her borderline-stalker behavior towards her comes off as a rather obsessive crush sometimes, and the two of them ''are'' rather fixated on each other. Lisa seems to take Susanna's recovery as a personal betrayal, raising the question -- does Lisa resent that Susanna's getting better... or [[PleaseDontLeaveMe that she's going to leave her]]? The two run away together at one point, which doesn't help, nor does the fact that Lisa has the most PetTheDog moments towards Susanna. There's also the fact that Susanna forgives Lisa at the end, and says that she wants to see her again, even after all Lisa did. Susanna even kisses her!

%%* HoYay: Susanna and Lisa; Lisa and MG.

* VindicatedbyHistory

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Did Lisa know about [[spoiler: Daisy's sexual abuse at the hands of her father]] [[FridgeHorror because it happened to her, too?]]

* [[HoYay LesYay]]: Susanna and Lisa; Lisa and MG.
* JerkassWoobie: Daisy; Lisa.

* NightmareFuel:
** Some deleted scenes show some very disturbing hallucinations of Susanna's, such as bending her hand in unnatural positions (this is when she believes that she has "no bones" in her hand), and of blood pouring out of the meat refrigerators at a supermarket. The best example for this trope from the book itself, though, would be when Susanna and a few other inmates go to the Maximum Security Wing to visit someone who was recently transferred from their wing. ...Let's just say there is a very good reason why some of the inmates there were locked up.
* OneSceneWonder: Vanessa Redgrave as Dr. Sonia Wick technically appears in three scenes, but she absolutely steals her sole major scene.

-->'''Valerie:''' What would you have said to her?
-->'''Susanna:''' I don't know. That I was sorry. That I will never know what it was like to be her. But I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. You hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.
* TheWoobie: Polly - even Lisa admits it.

* Both Creator/KurtwoodSmith and Creator/JeffreyTambor are scene-stealers in very minor roles.

* InformedAttribute: Georgina's condition of being a pathological liar, to some extent.
** Shortly after Susanna moves in, Valerie reminds Georgina that "yes means yes" and later, Georgina directly tells Susanna what mental illness she has (pseudologica fantastica). Then near the end of the film, Georgina shouts a few obvious lies. Other than these three brief events, not much is made of Georgina's disorder and she generally seems to be quite healthy.

* HarsherInHindsight: After BrittanyMurphy's death, Ryder stated that she couldn't watch this movie. Which is understandable given that [[spoiler: Daisy (Murphy's character) passed away in the bathroom and how Murphy herself met her end]].

* HarsherInHindsight: After BrittanyMurphy's death, Ryder stated that she couldn't watch this movie.

** The scene with Susanna and Valerie in the former's room, after she's returned to the hospital following [[spoiler:Daisy's suicide]]:

* HarsherInHindsight - After BrittanyMurphy's death, Ryder stated that she couldn't watch this movie.

** Some deleted scenes show some very disturbing hallucinations of Susanna's, such as bending her hand in unnatural positions (this is when she believes that she has "no bones" in her hand), and of blood pouring out of the meat refrigerators at a supermarket.
** Which were actually fairly close to the book in description. The best example for this trope from the book itself, though, would be when Susanna and a few other inmates go to the Maximum Security Wing to visit someone who was recently transferred from their wing. ...Let's just say there is a very good reason why some of the inmates there were locked up.

* TearJerker: [[spoiler:Daisy's]] death.

* HilariousInHindsight: "Have you ever confused a dream with life? ''Or stolen something when you have the cash?''"

* LesYay: Susanna and Lisa, Lisa and MG.

* HighOctaneNightmareFuel: Some deleted scenes show some very disturbing hallucinations of Susanna's, such as bending her hand in unnatural positions (this is when she believes that she has "no bones" in her hand), and of blood pouring out of the meat refrigerators at a supermarket.
** Which were actually fairly close to the book in description. The best example for this trope from the book itself, though, would be when Susanna and a few other inmates go to the Maximum Security Wing to visit someone who was recently transferred from their wing. ...Let's just say there is a very good reason why some of the inmates there were locked up.

* JerkassWoobie: Daisy.