7 Movies Like Girl, Interrupted That Are Actually Very Good

"Girl, Interrupted" is a sensitive portrait taken from a true-life story. Set in 1967, it examines the life of budding writer Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder), a teen who finds herself forcibly committed to a mental hospital after she attempts suicide. There, she learns she has borderline personality disorder, makes friends with her fellow inmates, and becomes caught in a tug-of-war between the charismatic so-called-sociopath, Lisa (Angelina Jolie), and Dr. Sonia Wick (Vanessa Redgrave), the faculty's head psychologist. Lisa encourages Susanna's rebellion against therapy and the institution's regulations, and Dr. Wick wants to see her return to the world outside the hospital.

It's a well-lauded dramatic outing, and it isn't alone in examining the interior lives of women coping with suicidal ideation, or those forced into institutions against their will who battle to be seen as human. The movies listed below are either historical pictures set sometime in past decades featuring female protagonists coming of age, stories about women coping with mental illness, or stories set in mental institutions. All of them are good — in entirely different ways — from "Girl, Interrupted." 

This 1979 version of Sylvia Plath's roman a clef novel has some pretty big flaws in it. It's also got some moments that have aged pretty poorly. And yet there's something magnetic about the motion picture, which has long been bashed for shifting around the book's continuity. Yet its 1950s-by-way-of-the-1970s milieu is fascinating and even captivating. 

The film sees writer Esther Greenwood (Marilyn Hassett) experience a hectic and unfulfilling internship at a women's magazine in New York City. She returns to her New England home and experiences a mental collapse, ultimately attempting suicide. Confined to a high-class mental institution, Esther has to find herself again.

It's messy and a little sloppy. In shifting the suicide pact Esther tries to make with her mother to fellow inmate Joan (Donna Mitchell) — made a lesbian by the movie's narrative –  it erred enough to cause Dr. Jane V. Anderson, upon whom Plath loosely based Joan, to sue director Larry Peerce, screenwriter Marjorie Kellogg,  Avco Embassy Pictures, CBS Inc., Time-Life Films, HBO (for broadcasting the film after its theatrical run), Vestron Inc., and Plath's executor Ted Hughes for ruining her reputation. The suit ultimately won Anderson over $100,000. 

Flawed it may be. But is it surprisingly good? On some odd level, in its soapy quasi-faithfulness to Plath's poetry, despair, and life in general, somehow it is.

Looking for another Angelina Jolie period piece featuring her rebelling against social norms? "Foxfire" is an adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates novel about a girl gang that forms during the group's final year in high school in the 1950s. The five outsiders that comprise the gang are brought together by Margaret "Legs" Sadovsky (Jolie), a runaway teen stuck between adulthood and childhood. When they team up to claim revenge against the harassing Mr. Buttinger (John Diehl), the other four Foxfires find themselves expelled from school. The girls form a lifelong bond while hiding out from the adults in their lives to avoid dealing with the fallout from the expulsion but soon must figure out if they need to keep moving, as "Legs" wishes, or to settle back into their home lives. 

"Foxfire" provides an early outstanding performance for Jolie, a credible period piece, and proves to be a lost classic in the annals of films about girls rebelling against authority. It's filled with thorny moments of addiction, trauma, and violence that many a teen film wouldn't touch — and makes it a solid companion for "Girl, Interrupted."

An underrated, imperfect coming-of-age story set from the 1950s to the 1980s, "Riding in Cars with Boys" is about a girl whose dream of becoming a writer is waylaid by teen pregnancy, teen motherhood, and poverty. It's also based on a true story, that of author Beverly Donofrio.

Fifteen-year-old Bev (Drew Barrymore) dreams of becoming a poet, but her one-night stand with Ray Hasek (Steve Zahn) changes everything. Ray and Bev are forced into a shotgun wedding when Bev turns up pregnant. She has to drop out of school and delay her college plans to take care of her son. Setback after setback besets the small family until Ray's heroin addiction makes Bev a single mother. Resentfully, she carts young Jason through life but somehow manages to achieve her dream through sheer tenacity — and the help of her best friend, Fay (Brittany Murphy of "Girl, Interrupted"). But her relationship with Jason remains strained, and it's up to mother and son to muddle things out together.

This is Penny Marshall's final narrative film, and it's much darker and more complex than it seems on the surface. Complex, filled with anti-heroines, and providing another great Brittany Murphy performance, "Riding in Cars with Boys" is an unexpected winner.

Want another Winona Ryder coming-of-age tale set in the 1960s? "Mermaids" rides the line between slice-of-life comedy and impactful drama, telling a story about a teenager trying to find a way and life of her own while her mother tries to figure out how to settle down.

Rachel Flax (Cher) has spent her whole life running away from her bad romantic decisions, with her daughters paying the price. In rebellion, her oldest, Charlotte (Ryder) has turned to Catholicism even though the family is Jewish. Little Kate (Christina Ricci), meanwhile, just wants to be a championship swimmer. Everything changes when they move to Eastport, Massachusetts. There, Rachel finds possibly lasting romance with shoe store owner Lou (Bob Hoskins), Charlotte is bedeviled by the sexual attentions of a much older man named Joe (Michael Schoeffling), and Kate's swimming obsession puts her in danger.

A touching story about family — found and biological — of self-discovery, and of being true to yourself, "Mermaids" is definitely a winner.

Several people called "Girl, Interrupted" the "girl version" of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" upon its release, and while that remains up in the air it's a more than worthy watch. This Oscar-winning legend helped set the tone and pace for asylum films for all time, so even if it features a predominantly male cast, it's no wonder that people have compared "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with "Girl, Interrupted."

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" has a large ensemble cast. It's about nine-plus inmates in an Oregon asylum in the 1960s. Thrown into their midst is Randle "Mac" McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a flimflammer who tries to turn his hard labor sentence for a statutory rape charge into a quick six. He immediately sets about turning the hospital into a place of fun and merriment, with secret trips away, poker games, and major doses of self-confidence for all. Opposing Mac is Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), the icy head nurse who manipulates the patients into following her rules and doing what she wants.  Mac and Ratched are on a terrible collision course that can only end in violence, multiple rebellions, and death. 

A tribute to freedom, there's nothing quite like "Cuckoo" — and nothing quite like the feeling it leaves behind.

"Prozac Nation" has more than a whiff of "The Bell Jar" to it. The fact that it's a real-life story in which a Harvard student music journalism student (Christina Ricci) soon finds herself sinking into a torpor over her father's absence from her life just goes to show how little things had changed between the 1950s and the film's mid-'80s setting.

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Wurtzel is coping poorly with her entry into Harvard. She relies on drugs, alcohol, and sex to get her through her difficulties, and in spite of excelling academically, she can't seem to fit in. She soon finds herself on a course of therapy and drug treatments, and only Dr. Sterling (Anne Heche) can help her puzzle out the old scars and sad feelings that have her locked in a holding pattern. 

It's an icy little film; visually complex, but fearless in its searching desire to find a way out of the gloom.

The creme de la creme of the lost girls genre, "The Virgin Suicides" is a tribute to the difficulties of living under repression. For the Lisbon girls, their home is a restrictive prison, as intensely repressive as any mental hospital.

Cecilia (Hanna R. Hall), Therese (Therese Lisbon), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook), and Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst) live with a teacher father and a repressive mother. They make an island nation unto themselves, and their beauty stirs up the neighborhood boys. Caught in their tower, the youngest commits suicide at a party thrown by their parents to urge the girls into the social mix — ironically, to prevent further self-harm. Even more strongly controlled afterward, the remaining four girls reach out with longing to the world outside — but agree to leave it together. 

"The Virgin Suicides" all ends in madness, death, beauty, and the rebellion of youth. That may make it the perfect double-header with "Girl, Interrupted," as it's messy and fearless in a similar way. One has a happy ending, one has a difficult ending — but both plumb the depths of depression without fear.

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