New Waterford Girl

While imagining the childhood of Andy Warhol , Lou Reed once wrote, "There's only one good thing about a small town: you hate it, and you know you have to leave." A similar notion seems to have occurred to Mooney Pottie ( Liane Balaban ), a 15-year-old Canadian girl growing up in a village deep in the rugged coal mining area of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Mooney wants to be an artist and feels out of place among the rough-hewn villagers and her unsophisticated family. When her art teacher, Cecil Sweeney ( Andrew McCarthy ), tells her that he could arrange for her to attend an art institute in Manhattan, her parents refuse to allow her to go. Stranded in a place she hates, Mooney finally discovers a kindred spirit when new girl Lou ( Tara Spencer Nairn ) moves into the neighborhood. Lou's father was a boxer from Brooklyn, and she's inherited his talent for fisticuffs; Lou has a way with a sucker punch that soon has all the girls in town begging her to knock out their boyfriends when they get out of line. Mooney and Lou soon team up on a plan that will allow them to move on to bigger and better things. Canadian filmmaker Allan Moyle returned home for this comedy set in the mid-1970s, which features a soundtrack of classic Canadian rock, including vintage tracks by April Wine and The Stampeders. — Mark Deming