When comparing this movie to the book, my first impression is that the book is about a young girl who is raped and learns to stand up for herself, stop blaming herself, and speak up for herself. On the other hand, the movie is about a girl named Melinda and her emotional growth during her first year of high school, after being raped by a near stranger and classmate at a party. The book is about a rape victim named Melinda, and the movie is about a girl named Melinda who is a rape victim. The movie Melinda is a much more powerful character that carries a lot of weight, even though the book was told in first person. This is both good and bad, and here is why.
The movie focusing on Melinda is good, because they do it really well. Kristen Stewart does a great job and makes Melinda seem like a very real, likable teenager, even without much dialogue. Her body language is so good that I felt like the few times we heard her thoughts weren’t necessary, even if it is a movie based on a book. Another big thing about Melinda is that her wardrobe and makeup were done really well; she definitely looked the part of an awkward freshman girl trying to fly below the radar. I was really rooting for the main character, watching her grow and stand up for herself. In that way, the movie’s focus on the main character made it a more enjoyable movie.
What is bad about that is that it focuses less on Melinda’s actual trauma and more on how she deals with it. At the same time, they dramatize her rape (in flashbacks) in a way I really don’t like. Let me explain something about her rapist, Andy Evans. In the book, he is not crazy. He is more misogynistic and has a worse sense of male entitlement than most men, but not to the point that he has a mental illness. He almost falls into the category of a normal party guy, a player. He doesn’t believe himself to be a rapist. This is something I like about the book, because in the real world, that is the kind of person who commits rape. But in the movie he doesn’t fit this description. The key difference is how the rape scene is done. In the book Melinda is much more obviously drunk, and Andy is also quite intoxicated. Her only protests are to say “No” once, and half-heartedly try to stop him. Then she goes limp. In the movie she struggles with all her might beneath his weight, screaming and kicking and punching. I don’t like this because it reinforces the misconception that that’s what a rape victim does - punches and kicks and yells. Anything less and it’s not a rape.
Once again, book Andy is almost a normal guy. This is why it’s believable that he doesn’t think that the incident was rape. He thinks that Melinda going limp meant she wanted him to do it. He actually said so when he confronted her at the end. He thought that all that had happened was drunk sex. Andy was almost a normal guy, just heavily influenced by rape-apologetic culture. This makes it much more believable, because that is how teenage rapists do, generally, think.
Movie Andy would have had to be very mentally unbalanced to think that he wasn’t at fault. He would have had to be a level of screwed up that just isn’t believable for a seventeen-year-old. Not to mention, if Melinda struggled against him as much as she did, I don’t think it would have taken her so long to tell somebody about the incident. In the book she has to realise that what happened was definitely rape and has to stop blaming herself before she can tell anybody. In the movie, she became a strong girl who didn't have a shadow of doubt that she was raped with a capital R, and she didn’t need to take so long to speak up. Also, let’s not forget that it’s totally removing one very important message of the book, that rape is not just when they victim struggles. In the book we get a powerful message of, ”Drunk means no. Silence means no. No means no.”, and the movie is, I repeat, just about Melinda’s emotional growth, no matter how well they pull it off.
In this way, while the movie is more enjoyable, the book is more powerful and educational. We have a very good coming-of-age movie, and a believable, life-changing book.
