Gus Van Sant's "Restless" is a film about love, an ode to doomed but pure teenage infatuation. But it's also about love of a film, in this case Hal Ashby's cult classic "Harold and Maude." It's one of those cases where the lift (or "homage") is so overt and massive that it's hard to consider "Restless" on its own merits.
Ashby's film was a product of the post-1960s freedom that American filmmakers enjoyed for a while, and it remains a singular film even today, with its death-obsessed and neurotic 20-year-old and the motorcycle-riding, vivacious granny with whom he becomes romantically involved. With its outrageous black humor (faked suicides) and different-is-OK philosophy it died at the box office, but became an all-time favorite of those whose language it spoke, the misfits and weirdos and loners, among whom presumably were Van Sant and screenwriter Jason Lew.
"Restless" features a withdrawn teenager named Enoch (played by a sallow Henry Hopper, son of the late Dennis Hopper) who, just like Bud Cort in "Harold and Maude," spends his free time attending the funerals of people he doesn't know. When he's caught out one time, he's rescued from humiliation by Annabel (an equally pallid Mia Wasikowska), who's spunky and vibrant where Enoch is dour and furtive, which mirrors the dynamic in "Harold and Maude" except that Annabel's a beautiful teenager instead of a weathered sixtysomething (thus losing much of the edge).