I wasn’t familiar with Susanna Kaysen before seeing this film. Same deal with Angelina Jolie, and she earned that Academy Award for it.
This film is based on Kaysen’s memoir of her time at a psychiatric institution, where she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She’s played well by Winona Ryder, who I’ll always know as Lydia Deets from Beetlejuice. In her pre-institutionalized life, given in fragmented flashbacks, she seems to be a loner at her high school, whose guidance counselor gives her the distinguished title of “the only person in your class not to go to college.” She attempts suicide by overdosing on aspirin and vodka and is subsequently committed.
There, she makes a group of female friends, including her roommate Georgina, the childlike burn victim Polly, and the paranoid Daisy. But the standout is Angelina Jolie’s Lisa, a sociopath who knows everybody’s weak spot. Her bubbly indifference at Daisy’s suicide had to be a tough scene to act.
The pro-single part: At one point, Susanna has a boyfriend named Toby, who, after being drafted into the Vietnam War, tries to get her to leave the institution to go with him to Canada. For perhaps the first time in her life, she’s found friends, so she doesn’t go, and we don’t see Toby after that. The bulk of the film does revolve around her friendships with the other ladies in the institution. At the end, we learn she’s stayed in touch with some of them.
According to Kaysen’s Wikipedia bio, she is a published writer and has been divorced. Is she a single at heart? I don’t know, but it would track.