L.I.E. (2001)

Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano) is a sensitive fifteen-year-old who runs with a rough crowd. The recent death of his mother (in a car accident on exit 52 of the Long Island Expressway) and his father's indifference to it, have left him floating in a world bubbling over with sex, violence, and danger. When his best friend Gary convinces Howie to burglarize the house of their neighbor, 60-year-old Big John, the tenuous balance of their teenage existence is entirely thrown off. To make matters even worse, Howie's father is arrested over a bad business deal. Howie is left dangling, and only Big John seems to care. A harrowing mixture of tenderness and perversion electrifies the father-son relationship that forms between Howie and Big John. Director Michael Cuesta's touching vision of domestic life in modern-day suburbia is at once humorous and unnerving as it boldly charts one boy's convoluded path through adolescence.

This film screened as part of the 2001 New Directors/New Films series organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City.