This flawed film came out of nowhere the other night. We don't know if it ever was released commercially, but it appears to have gone straight to video. As much as we wanted it to be better, "Boys" suffers from a screen play that doesn't fully expand on its characters and leaves us wishing and waiting for more.

Stacy Cochran, who adapted the short story by James Salter, sets her story in what appears to be a prep school in New England. This is a school for privileged kids sent by their families to get an education. By having attended this institution will probably ensure the rich boys access to prestige colleges and universities later on.

Into this quiet background another darker story happens involving the rich, careless and perhaps promiscuous Patty Vare, who has had a terrible experience when a baseball player takes her on a night ride that is leading to sex, when the car plunges into a river. Patty, who is questioned by the police, is seen riding her horse as the memory of the previous night comes haunting her memory. In attempting a jump over a fence, she and the horse fall and she is hurt.

Enter John Baker, a student from the school, who is alerted by another student about the young woman he has found in a field nearby. John decides to take her into his dorm against house rules. They end up going away, ending in the county fair in a night that ends up in a romantic note, but Patty. realizing she wants not to implicate John, disappears. John's parents come to the school and they are helpless to put any sense into his head. That morning Patty and John meet again in the police station. It's clear they have found one another and no one will separate them.

The two main roles, Patty and John, are given excellent readings by Winona Ryder and Lukas Haas. Both show great chemistry in their scenes together. Unfortunately, other characters don't fare that well. There is Fenton, who helps Patty escape, whose presence is never justified well. As played by James LeGros, he is an enigma. His girlfriend, Jilly, is acted by Catherine Keener in a role where she is totally wasted. Chris Cooper and Jessica Harper play John's angry parents.

The film is not a total failure because of our interest in Patty and John. Perhaps with another director, and a better screen play a better film would have resulted, although Ms. Cochran, and her cinematographer, Robert Elswith, give the production a lovely sheen with the local color of the country in autumn, the county fair seen from a distance, and the staid prep school.

I liked this movie. Imagine a teenager, named John, the typical guy who goes to the last year of high school and doesn't quite know what to do with his life. Then, one day, he finds a beautiful woman lying on the floor in a field who, apparently, is on the run for something she did and takes her to his room. It's a boarding school, he might get kicked out, but he doesn't care; he just wants to help her. The look on his face when the woman first wakes up and the teenager walks towards her, is the first sign of a magical performance by Lukas Hass; it's a look that combines the excitement of having this woman in his bed and the curiosity of wanting to know what she might have done.

The woman is called Patty Vare, played by the wonderful Winona Ryder in the kind of role she knows by heart but never forgets to add new elements to. Here, besides appearing to be somewhere other than the real world (she fell off a horse before John found her and doesn't remember much), she masters the 'look'; that seductive look only she can achieve and makes anyone go crazy to the point that they would do anything for her. Well, at least that's the effect it had on John in the movie…And on me, of course.

But don't get things wrong. I personally don't think "Boys" is a romantic movie, even if it was writer/director Stacy Cochran's intention. I would call it some kind of an 'age analysis'. Yes, there are romance related moments that make you smile because Winona is an expert on the subject, but this time her character Patty is an expert too: on men. So the study the film tries to make is what can happen when a woman of Patty's experience meets a kid like John in an extreme situation.

That's why Cochran shows us flashbacks of what happened to Patty before meeting John; they're necessary for us to know the kind of woman she is. On the other hand, we don't know anything about John but the fact that he has a bad relationship with his father (a respectable Chris Cooper). But we don't need to know, because we realize when he is with Patty; when we hear what he says and see what he does.

There's a scene in the town fair, where Patty and John are together in the merry-go-round. The final moment of that scene explains why I liked this movie, and those are the scenes in the movie that work. Not the police sub-plot (led by a convincing John C. Reilly), not John's relationship with his friends at school (although some scenes are good to watch more of Hass' perfect work), not even the conflict with his father.

There's another scene really worth paying attention too: a chat in a table where a beautiful light from the window makes Patty seem so vulnerable. Luckily for us, this is a movie where we have the final world; about whether we believe the characters or not and about the inconclusive and far-fetched ending. Yes, it may not honor reality itself, but "Boys" honors its title; and I liked that. I liked this movie.

I liked this movie a lot. Visually, it is just so appealing in a very mystical sort of way. I don't get why nobody gets this movie. While the story doesn't quite hold up as well as the photography and the ending is way eighties, if you are a poetic person, you will get into this. In a weird sort of way it has a bit of the Love Story appeal. There is just something about it that can't be explained. A lot of the appeal has to do with winona ryder, she has never looked more magnetic...trust me. She actually does a very good acting job with this, in fact she probably saves the movie with her appeal and acting skills. There are certain scenes in this flick that will just float you away...like the one where the two main characters make love in the woods behind the carnival...classic. The first fifteen minutes are very interesting also. To sum up a rambling review just let me say this is one for are searching for something poetic and different in a movie. This is one for the fans of beautiful, sensitive people, falling leaves, and cobblestone paths.