Gas Food Lodging

“When Shade's good, she's very good. But when Trudi's bad, she's better.”

Nobody in a small New Mexico town can say why the girls' father left, and Nora (Brooke Adams), who waits tables at a truck-stop diner, isn't offering. Her daughters fill the silence differently: Trudi (Ione Skye) drops out of school to work beside her, while Shade (Fairuza Balk) spends afternoons at Spanish-language movie matinees. Allison Anders, in her first feature, keeps the camera on the trailer park and the diner counter, where ordinary hours carry the story.