Restless is the story of a terminally ill teenage girl who falls for a boy who tries to cope with his parents' deaths by hanging out with a ghost of a Japanese kamikaze pilot and attending the funerals of strangers.
"Restless" exudes the maturity that eludes Mr. Van Sant's previous fusions of youth and death. It's too bad he still hasn't learned to shower his female leads with the same adoring attention he lavishes on his male ones.
This low-budget movie takes its time filling in the backgrounds of its characters. That works for a while, but when it's over you may wonder if that's all there is.
The couple's ability to see through how people perceive courageous behavior in the face of death forms the heart of the film. Van Sant illustrates that those trappings usually exist only to make the ones who are not sick feel better about themselves.
This movie pretends it's about death -- our couple meets because Enoch crashes funerals, a literary device that has no relevance here -- but it never scratches past the perfect pale void faces of its leads.
