Two stories from suburbia. The first, titled “Fiction” is about a white college girl who is hurt by his boyfriend’s harsh words and seeks solace in their African-American teacher’s arms. (The boyfriend’s anger comes from his self-loathing because of his Cerebral Palsy and from the teacher’s bad review of his writing effort.) I really enjoyed the characters in the classroom. The director/screenwriter found the typical behavior of several different persona. Plus it handles pretension and racism in a clever way.
The second, longer story (“non-fiction”) is about a teenager, with minimal life-force running in him. But he lives in a stereotypical affluent suburbia, where his father pushes his wish on his son. Then along comes a documentary maker who ends up making a movie about the boy’s family. His honest effort ends up being taken as ironic and that way it works. Meanwhile the main movie turns sardonic, where the youngest of the 3 children manage to hypnotize the father, the overworked housekeeper kills the family after her dismissal, the football player brother end sup in coma and the clueless boy turns accepts his homosexuality. Lots of subplots, lots of observation about suburbia’s facade. Good capturing of some of the shadows of the “American Dream”.