The dreams and torments of teen-aged girls as they beat against tides of sexual desire—theirs and others’—get grimly romanticized in Laurel Nakadate’s harsh and moody second feature. On summer vacation in their dull Florida suburb, Chrissy (Christina Kolozsvary), living with her maudlin mother (who’s preparing to marry her sleazy, insinuating boyfriend), takes her best friend, June (Julie Potratz), who lives with them as a sort of foster child, on an improvised road trip to Nashville. Ostensibly searching for her father, Chrissy actually plans to visit her third-grade teacher (Dave Cloud), who has been corresponding with her online, and who turns out to be a shambling, desperate mess. Their scene in his cell-like bedroom in his father’s house, in which he presses her for all the physical and psychic titillation he can get in a hurry, is a neorealist version of a Lynchian nightmare, an anthology piece of creeped-out horror. Nakadate blends scenes of grungy grace and stifled epiphanies with frustration, degradation, and the constant threat of violence; though she yields too easily to the generically picturesque, is uninterested in practicalities, and knows too well where the story is going and what it’s saying, she captures startling and memorable moments that, if short on insight, are rich in disturbing overtones. —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Single film tickets $11 year-round SFFS members, $13 general, $12 seniors, students and persons with disabilities; double feature $15 year-round SFFS members, $18 general. Box office opens February 1 for members and February 8 for the general public: online at sffs.org or call 451-561-5000 for information.