Wry Ryder

Where style meets substance

fanfair

A clear-eyed mass of moxie and intelligence, nineteenyear-old Winona Ryder is in a transitional career phase, and knows it. In Heathers, she hung out with the insufferable bad girls before triumphantly putting them to their rest. Then she was the waif who nabbed Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire. Next she falls for the sharpfingered title character (played by her real-life main squeeze, Johnny Depp) in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, and in Mermaids she again battles adversity as Cher's daughter, who rebels against her mother's flakiness and strives for nunhood. "Because I haven't done teen movies,'' she feels, "people can relate more to me in an adult role." No wonder Ryder perennially rejects "those comball coming-of-age, feel-good" projects. She came of age a long time ago. MICHAEL MUSTO