There is a would-be rapist, thwarted by a cigarette driven into his eye. A nagging factory boss has his head shut in a vice. The suburban environment, it's not too important. Landscape doesn't damage people. Architecture doesn't damage people.
People damage people.
Maria and Matthew's paths cross and, by a process of bandaging each others' wounds, they achieve some kind of mutual redemption. She starts out the film embodying just about everything I hate in the young. Yet when her ghastly mother tries to get Matthew off with her older sister, she refuses to stoop to vengeance. And it is that action which knocks her Mom back into the land of the living. Adrienne Shelly gives a finely graded performance as Maria.