Carrie Pilby (Bel Powley), a 19-year-old genius fresh out of Harvard, struggles to make sense of the world she perceives to be full of oversexed, deceitful hypocrites.
Keeping people at arm’s length, she finds herself isolated, friendless, dateless and unemployed.
Directed by Susan Johnson, “Carrie Pilby” is a comedy-|drama based on American author Caren Lissner’s novel of the same title.
To coax Carrie out of her shell, her psychiatrist Dr. Petrov (Nathan Lane) makes a list of goals for her to achieve, including making a few friends. At first Carrie resists. But when her goal-oriented prodigy brain kicks in, she embraces the task with a vengeance.
As she tackles each item on the list, Carrie begins to make new friends. As Carrie gets to know them, she learns that they are not one-dimensional stereotypes she always thought of them; but rather living, breathing, complex human beings.
Carrie begins to understand that humans, like books, cannot be judged by their “covers.” Set against the backdrop of decked-out-for-the-holidays New York City, Carrie evolves into the compassionate person she never knew she wanted to be.
Hilarious
The novel was noted in several reviews as one of the smarter and more original novels in the genre, with Neil Genzlinger in the New York Times calling it “hilarious.” It proved successful, selling more than 50,000 copies.
“I was a single girl living in Hoboken, New Jersey,” said Lissner, “which is right across the river from New York City. I was in the city a lot, doing typical single-girl-in-the-city things, when it occurred to me that the next story I wanted to tell was about a girl who was very, very smart but not socially aware—someone young who sees things in black and white because she doesn’t have life experience and as such, judges people a little more harshly.”
Director Johnson noted that book has an extremely loyal and broad fan base of men and women, ages 18-80.
“The scope of the ‘Carrie Pilby’ audience intrigues me,” Johnson said. “Clearly, people are relating to this story in a big way, and hopefully we got it right for those people who, like me, really love Caren’s beautiful novel.” —CONTRIBUTED
Pioneer Films’ “Carrie Pilby” is showing in cinemas.
