Restless: Cannes Review

6:30 AM PDT 5/12/2011 by Todd McCarthy

“Seen any good funerals lately?” asks one funeral junky to another in Restless, a terminally cloying and mushy-headed romance between a cancer-stricken young woman and an orphaned teenager whose closest confidant is the ghost of a kamikazi pilot. The most banal and indulgent of Gus Van Sant’s periodic studies of troubled kids, this agonizingly treacly tale comes off like an indie version of Love Story except with worse music. Gullible teen girls represent the target audience for this Sony Pictures Classics release, as most people of voting age will blanch at such a cutesy depiction of adolescent angst.