After reviewing over 1,500 films for The Legionnaire, it is difficult to come up with superlatives for what I view.  When you are repeatedly saying this is the best or worst movie ever, the assertion loses its meaning.  Conversely, having such a catalog of reviews means that I can recall a variety of films and thus give an educated opinion when I do make such a potentially divisive judgment.  Having all this in mind, I can confidently say that Party Girl (1995) is one of the strangest movies I have watched.  Typically, I would not be drawn to something with such a title.  Yet, the tagline mentioned the eponymous character, Mary (Parker Posey), undergoing a transformation from leading a wildlife to becoming a librarian.  I like libraries.  I have briefly worked in a couple.  Yet, my experience of this life is a bit different from what I am about to describe.

As the title suggests, the life Mary leads is one of a Party Girl.  During the opening credits, we are led up the flight of steps that lead to her apartment where, appropriately, she is hosting a soiree.  Though we later find out she is Ivy League educated, she earns something of a living putting on these kinds of events.  It seems that they are becoming a bit much, though, as the police show up and take her to jail, having found illegal substances on the premises.  With some light protesting, she is taken overnight to jail and released in the morning.  Despite being free, she now has legal fees to pay and not much money left to do it.  In short, she realizes that she needs to find a job.  Arguing the matter with her disc jockey (DJ), temporary roommate Leo (Guillermo Díaz), she avows that she is now a waitress when he puts forward that line of work as a possible fix.  Though she is not interested in his ideas on manual labor, she does help Leo by introducing him to Rene (Donna Mitchell), the owner of a club Mary frequents, in order to potentially get him a regular gig spinning records.  In the meantime, Mary visits Judy Lindendorf (Sasha von Scherler), Mary’s godmother and longtime friend of her deceased mother.  Judy is a librarian, thus not impressed with Mary’s flashy dress and manner.  Judy gives the same advice as Leo, and Mary gives the same answer.  In the middle of this back and forth, Mary suddenly says that she will work at the library.  With considerably less enthusiasm, Judy tells Mary that it is not as simple as filling out an application.  To be a bonafide librarian, one needs to go to graduate school and get a degree in library science.  Mary protests that she will take whatever positive she can get, adding that she is a hard worker but secretly thinking it will be an easy job.  Judy relents, not solely out of sympathy, but because she wishes to get to know her goddaughter.  Predictably, Mary does not take her work seriously, it being a stark contrast to tripping the light fantastic as is her usual modus operandi.  Nonetheless, she settles into a routine that involves going to the library for her shift and getting felafel for lunch from Mustafa (Omar Townsend), a Lebanese immigrant on whom she is developing a crush.  Things progress to the point that they agree to go out on a date, but on the appointed evening, Judy lectures Mary about the newcomer’s continuing lack of grasp of the Dewey Decimal System (DDC).  In case it has been a minute since you have stepped into a public library, DDC is the method used to arrange books based on subject and author.  Judy’s criticism stuns Mary.  After spending some time at the bar having a few drinks, Mary bilks Mustafa in favor of returning to the library in order to master the dreaded DDC.  Overnight, she comes proficient with the system and a model employee.  She takes the DDC home, too, re-organizing Leo’s record collection prior to him going the club for another late-night shift.  Things are going well until Mustafa comes to the library one night before closing.  Because she had not showed for their date, she was embarrassed to see him.  However, she is left alone with him to assist with his search for how to become a certified teacher in the United States.  They end up doing some off-camera adult activities, but that is not the worst part of the night.  She had been left to lock up before going home, duties which include closing the windows.  She forgets this last part, leading to a furious Judy firing her in the morning when Mary returns due to rain getting in and ruining a number of books.  Now unemployed, Mary’s first instinct to make ends meet is to sell the majority of her clothes in order to pay rent, though it is a stopgap solution.  Hence, she goes back to throwing parties.  The one she puts on is not the most culturally uplifting, being stereotypically Middle Eastern, even having Mustafa dress in Arab garb to go with his falafel cart.  He and a number of others give her a hard time during the event, and she asks a drug dealer to give her the kind of psychedelic that will, “make her future children grow gills.”  Whatever that means, it leads to her having a mental breakdown.  Still, she is with it enough to fend of Nigel (Live Schreiber), her ex-boyfriend, who tries to take advantage of her addled state sexually speaking.  Locking him out of her apartment building, she falls asleep on the stairs to her abode dreaming (or hallucinating) of hundreds of books falling around her.  Upon coming to in the morning, she marches back to the library and informs Judy that she has figured out her life, and that Judy should come to her goddaughter’s place at 8:00 pm.  Until then, Mary learns everything she can about being a librarian.  Unfortunately, since it is her birthday, her friends put on a surprise party for her.  Determined to prove herself, Mary tries to get everyone to leave before Judy arrives, but is unsuccessful.  Even so, Mary proves her determination enough and Judy agrees to assist with the career change.

There were several points while watching Party Girl that I considered changing to a different movie.  Luckily, it is only ninety minutes long.  It is also (somehow) something of a cult classic, being popular among bookstore employees and librarians.  This Catholic, despite loving books, felt a bit like an alien watching this subculture of partying collide with the realm of higher ideas.  Put simply, this was not my favorite film.  At the same time, it has a moment of clarity that gives me an in for my Catholic analysis.  As Mary is beginning to appreciate her job at the library, she encounters The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) by Albert Camus.  I have not read it, nor do I intend to, but one bit Mary quotes from it states that the ancient Greek mythical man cursed to roll a rock up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll back down and have to do it over again, should be happy.  That does not appear to make much sense, nor have an application to Faith.  What interests me is Mary’s defense of this idea as she discusses it with Leo.  She relates to it, saying that it might be crazy, but at least Sisyphus has a purpose.  Working at a library is arguably the real-world equivalent to such an eternity, endlessly checking out books, accepting them when they are returned, and reshelving them.  And repeat.  Yet, it is a fresh contrast to the meaningless party life she had been leading.  It is the equivalent of answering God’s call to a vocation.  Not everything we do has to make sense to everyone else.  As long as we feel it is for us, which is often the result of Divine inspiration, what others say does not matter.  A further Catholic comparison to Mary’s career choice can be seen in the final sequence.  When she announces to her guests that she wants to be a librarian, they treat her as if she has gone mad.  You can hear similar testimonies, for example, from people who have joined Catholic religious orders.  Their lack our vision for our vocation does not make it wrong.  God has a purpose for all of us, even if it seems as trivial as rolling a rock up a hill.

What I would have stopped rolling is the cameras had I been on the set of Party Girl.  It was difficult to see a point to any of this, and there are copious amount of drinking and drug use in the movie.  There is also a bit of unnecessary nudity, though I increasingly struggle to understand when it is ever necessary.  In short, I do not see much value in this one.