AllMovie

Although it's unpolished and sometimes loses its footing, this fluffy indie drama parlays its fine performances, well-structured script, and quirky je ne sais quois into an oddly affecting combination. Tara Subkoff gives a grave, sweet lead performance as Jake, a sugar-addicted teen with a deadbeat mom, a loser sister, and nowhere to go. Simultaneously naive and knowing, but never coy, Subkoff's portrayal brings out the nascent maternal side in Sandra Bernhard, who tries, usually successfully, to reign in the wilder aspects of her persona. The emotional dynamics between Bernhard and Subkoff shine through even when the actresses are saddled with stilted dialogue by writer/directors Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse. Any such rough patches are worth sitting through, anyway, just for the priceless scene where Subkoff's puppy dog-like Jake, having climbed into bed with Bernhard's cynical Marci, explains to her new mom-figure the precise calculations she uses to choose each night's candy feast. The very idea that a futureless teen could find a surrogate mom in the form of a massage parlor madam may strike some as fantastical. But unlike, say, Spike Lee's Girl 6, Lover Girl never treats sex work as glamorous or liberating. The characters band together into a makeshift family, but in the end, the job is distasteful, trashy, and low paying. As for the parlor's other denizens, Susan Barnes is terrific as the brassy proprietress, Loretta Devine camps it up delightfully as one of the employees, and Kristy Swanson is convincingly sullen and manipulative as Jake's sister. With its mixture of soiled expectations, strip mall banality, and girly exuberance, the production design cleverly captures the spirit of the script; it doesn't hurt that the producers sprang for some decent music (Team Dresch, Cibo Matto) and killer costumes. Its story may be offbeat and its worldview a little skewed, but this is one labor-of-love indie with a cohesive aesthetic that carries through every aspect of the production.