Boys

Winona Ryder delivers an unusually delicate performance as Patty, a fragile "bad girl" with a reckless streak and a haunted conscience, in Stacy Cochran's promising but ultimately disappointing follow-up to his playful My New Gun. Lukas Haas is the smitten prep school senior who risks expulsion when he rescues Patty from a riding accident and hides her in his dorm room. Cochran draws tender, vulnerable performances from both actors and beautifully orchestrates the hormonally charged maelstrom in the corridors of the boys' dorm as rumors of the forbidden "older woman" spread like wildfire. It's the conventional, colorless stories that frame their relationship--she's on the run from the cops, he's slowly suffocating under the demands of a severe father--that fail them. Perpetually on the verge of something happening, Boys ends without delivering on the promise of the evocative atmosphere, lovely grace notes, and rich, unexpected performances.