Connie, played by Laura Dern, is a 15 year-old with a typical teen attitude - she basically thinks that the world revolves around her. Her family has had enough of her behavior and tends to close her out of family bonding moments.
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The movie opens with a shot of Connie and her two best friends sleeping on the beach. They had awoken only to find out that they are supposed to be meeting Laura's mother at the mall and they are very late. They hitch a ride and make it to the mall on time.
The next time they go to the mall, they meet some older boys who want them to go to the same movie that they are seeing, but Jill, the third friend, doesn't want to go with the boys - she's the least mature of the three and is not ready for boys yet. Later, Connie and Laura want to go to the burger joint across the road, but Jill won't go, so the next day Connie and Laura go to the mall and the burger joint without Jill.
Throughout this, Connie is having problems with her mom, dad, and 24 year-old sister June, who still lives at home and whom everyone thinks is the perfect child.
Connie starts to date boys without her parents' knowledge and runs into an older man who acts like he is one of the teenagers. The ending of the story is much more ambigious than the movie.
The review of this Movie prepared by Christina Spiros
Connie (Dern) is a typical disaffected 15-year-old girl who lives in a Northern California suburb and is starting to feel the stirring of her adult feminine powers. She fights with her mom, hangs out with friends, and generates a little heat with boys who pursue her. An unexpected encounter with older man, a real smooth talker named Arnold Friend (Williams), who seems to know just where she's at and how to get to her, pushes Connie to make a huge and ambivalent leap into adulthood with all its mixed rewards. Joyce Chopra directed this small, independent 1985 feature based on a short story by Joyce Carol Oates called "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been." It's not a particularly momentous or thrilling story, but Williams, 18-year-old Dern, and Mary Kay Place as her worried but powerless mother, do a job of bringing this small tragedy (with a tidy tacked-on resolution not in keeping with its source). Watch for Levon Helm, drummer and vocalist with The Band, as the father.
The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
