Laurel Nakadate is a photographer and video/artist who wrote, shot, and directed this unusual film which she says is "about the anxieties teenage girls have about the desire to find love." The cast consists of amateur actors in Kansas City who were filmed in their homes. The nonlinear vignettes probe the girls' loneliness and lack of self-esteem. One girl watches Oprah and the plight of polar bears in the Arctic; another secretly carries on an affair with a large male doll who has a face like a rugged Jesus; a third announces her infatuation with a boy at school but later decides to commit suicide. There is also a little Lolita character who strolls around the neighborhood in short shorts; another girl is picked up at a drive-in and later rubs her body on the curved hood of a red car.

Stay the Same Never Change proves that desire is a strong energy in our lives that can hijack us and take us away to strange places. The predominant male in this otherwise alluring film is an unappealing married man who gets his cheap thrills looking in house windows or spying on young girls walking down the street. This Peeping Tom manages to convince one of those he has stalked to accompany him to a diner where he soon is bored with the object of his affection.

Where and When?

Screened at the New Directors/New Films Festival in New York City, March, 2009.