Told in three segments ranging from satirical to tragic, the film is a wildly original look at American manners, prejudices, and family dynamics.
CAPTION: An American portrait in three parts.
A voice-over (Virato) explains the concept of the film.
1st part: PENANCEThe alarm clock goes on and on. Gene Meeks (Mike Ellis) enters home and gets into the shower dressed. His wife Tammy Ray Meeks (Mary Griffin) beats him with a tennis racket. Another lady, Sheliah (Sheliah Ray Hipps) taking a suntanning session comments with Molly (Mollly Surrett) about how much in love that trailer-park couple used to be and we see instances of that. However, little by little, he talks to his dead animals and she checks porn sites on internet.
A friend of hers says that LOVE IS THE RULER and draws a ruler numbered 0 to 10. Gene cries over Tammy. A friend of his (Brian Fox) reminds him about the times when they used to shag girls from nightclubs. The biggest concern seems to be about... pistacchios, while they are driving toy cars.
Some other day, the mailman (Chusy) brings a package for Tammy but Gene takes it, and the mailman leaves jealous of Gene's moustache. It's a bag of pistacchos. They start doing surveillance on Tammy because it may be related to the Jihad. She buys stuff and meets people through the net. She meets HyperDriver and asks for the real name: Ali.
Gene and Brian see Ali (Rafat Abu-Goush) with a silver briefcase. Tammy meets Ali at a motel room at Mountainier Inn. Tammy tells him to say a lie and a truth to see if she can distinguish a gesture in his face. Gene's midget friend shoots Ali and picks the silver briefcase, where there is a camera. Better safe than sorry is the American way, according to them. Molly disagrees but Sheliah agrees, and Molly defends evolution.
2nd part: LOSSPat MacDonald (Susie Greene), a realty agent, drives but a young man tells her to pull over. There's an unknown little girl called Pearl (Perla Haney-Jardine) who ate five little brownies, and she doesn't know how she got there. The brownies were pot according to the young man. They take the little girl to a doctor (Frank Avery), who talks the man and why he's with the little girl. He is Uncle Jeremiah (Jeremiah Brennan), not her father, which scares Pat. He smokes pot in front of Pat, and tells them that her parents are dead. Jeremiah told her that Jonathan Lucas, her best friend, was the tooth fairy.
A similar girl (Sophia Tager) goes to a book shop to meet Jonathan Lucas (Jack Legwin), who is reading sitting on a corner, and then goes to a café and asks for hot chocolate. She gives the bartender (Crazzy Keith) a buc, but it's not enough. He doesn't know that Jonathan Lucas she's looking for, and laughs at the idea of that being the name of the tooth fairy. The girl throws her drawing of the tooth fairy to the rubbish bin. When they find each other, she is mad at him because the tooth fairy doesn't exist, but he says there is, but she saw putting money, the one-dollar note, under her pillow. He says that he was just a surrogate because the tooth fairy was sick that particular night. The girl takes one of her tooth with a tweezers. The next morning, there's no money under her pillow. She is mad at Jeremiah. When he notices the bruise on her cheek, she says she fell at a party the night before. She shows him the tooth and insists that there is no motherfucker tooth fairy. Finally, he admits so. She realises that her parents are dead. Jeremiah owes her money for her tooth. A scene of the girl flipping out.
3rd part: IGNORANCERalph (Ralph Brierley) is wealthy. His teachers used to treat him as an equal. His beard brought him the bliss of ignorance, the voice-over says. Ralph and his family at lunch, commenting on an event at his son's high school. Ralph says that he's never met any black person and he wants to meet some. The son, Ellis (Ellis Robinson), is choking to death, but Ralph saves him. Ellis and Dianne (Dianne Chapman) mock Ralph's epiphany. Ralph decides to spontaneously meet black people on the street and talk to one of them. He has a hallucination about a pot-smoking young black man joining them having breakfast at their garden, where celerty in in their breakfast mugs.
He finally talks to a black lady and tells her his ordeal. At first, she thinks he's asking for a nickel, but then, she hits him in the head. Meanwhile, Dianne is talking on her own and smoking in the car, remembering about a black baby which was born to white parents. Ralph enters a café and asks to be sat at the table of a black customer. The waitress (Anne Fitten Glenn) and the man look at his bloody face, and he tells them that he fell on the street. The waitres offers him some ice. The man is blind and he thinks that is what Ralph is looking for. Geen (Geen Hampton) is the name of the black blind man, and he says that his condition didn't prevent him to earn a french-linen jacket. Ellis passes out, Dianne screams for help, and a nice young man helps her. Geen and the waitress are surprised that he left his family at the car and bought Geen lunch. Ralph stares at Geen, which he hasn't noticed he was blind before.
Cut to the lunch at the beginning of the third part, with Ellis explaining how a guy broke chairs and tables at his high school cafeteria. Ralph never met a black man because his epiphany was short-lived and he didn't follow it through.
The film cuts to black.
The voice-over says that he's guilty of all the sins he's criticized in others.
---written by KrystelClaire
