American independent director Allison Anders made her name with this keenly observed tale of a single mother and her two daughters stuck in the truck-stop town of Laramie, New Mexico, barely a fly speck on the never-ending desert horizon. Ione Skye and Fairuza Balk star as sisters Trudi and Shade, who couldn't be more different. Trudi rebels against her mother and her soul-numbing life through sex and develops a reputation among the boys for being easy. Shade is the "good girl" who escapes through the overripe Mexican melodramas in the town's largely vacant theater. Brooke Adams, a loving mother hardened by rejection and a demanding job as a truck-stop waitress, tries to hide her loneliness and disappointment and set Trudi on a better path, but as with so many relationships in this film, conflict brings out the worst in them. Anders, a single mother herself, drew on her own experiences to enrich her adaptation of Richard Peck's novel Don't Look and It Won't Hurt, and she brings a haggard understanding to the strained relations between mother and daughter and the bleak desolation to the lives of three women trapped by circumstance, economics, and landscape, but she also reaches deep into the characters to expose their yearnings and steel their resolve. No knight in shining armor for these women, but Anders allows them to make their way through the emotional landscape with pluck and determination. --Sean Axmaker
(24 votes)
2.
Allison Anders’s GAS FOOD LODGING is a heartfelt, honest look at a teenage girl’s coming of age. Fairuza Balk stars, giving a tremendously sympathetic performance as Shade, a girl living in a trailer park with her mom, Nora (Brooke Adams), and doing her best to hold her volatile family together. While Shade’s older sister, Trudi (Ione Skye), sleeps around and is filled with rage at men, her mother, and the world in general, Shade is a compassionate, melancholy teen who spends time watching wildly romantic Mexican movies at the local cinema. She believes her mother will be happy if she can find her father, John Evans (a moving performance by James Brolin), and reunite her family. Though things don’t go quite so smoothly, the film maintains a hopeful tone. Anders’s second film, GAS FOOD LODGING put her on the indie film map, establishing her as sensitive director whose stories of struggling women, told in their own voices, are marked by emotional honesty and disarming humor. GAS FOOD LODGING is an intimate, well-wrought gem.
(20 votes)
3.
Love and sex complicate the lives of Nora Evans (Brooke Adams) and her two teenage daughters in this smart, sassy film about coming of age in a small New Mexico town. Seventeen-year-old Trudi Evans (Ione Skye) is beautiful, rebellious and very promiscuous-much to the dismay of her mother. Her younger sister Shade fantasizes about love while watching afternoon movie matinees. And Nora auditions a colorful cast of suitors while waiting tables in the local diner. Life takes a wild turn when Trudi announces she's pregnant and the father of her baby mysteriously disappears. The girl's long lost father (James Brolin) appears out of nowhere, hoping to make up for lost time. Shaping their lives in unpredictable ways, each new change teaches Nora and her daughters about love, life and each other.
(20 votes)
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