根据畅销小说真人真事改编,发生在八零年代中期抗忧郁剂流行前,一名出身工人家庭女子(Christina Ricci)在进入哈佛大学就读的头一年患了忧郁症。本片探讨了当代的离婚、毒品、性交、以及控制欲母亲(Jessica Lange)等社会问题。。
[opening narration]
Elizabeth:
Back, back, back. How fucking far back do you go? My mom and dad were divorced before I was two, and from that on my father was almost uninvolved in my life, and my mother much too involved. She wanted to make up for all her mistakes through me.
Elizabeth:
One night there was something in my pants, like blood. My mom said, oh, hell, your period. This is where all the trouble starts. She was right.
Elizabeth:
Now mom and dad really had something to fight over: me. Then one day my dad disappeared. No numbers, no letters - just gone. I wrote to seventeen magazine, a long letter about us. They wanted to publish it as an article, but kept asking, your dad going away, does he come back? Does it have a happy ending? In reality it didn't, but I thought, what the hell, I'll give them what they want.