There aren't many movies that embrace the power of a woman's erotic rage, but Jason Ruscio's video-shot angst-of-the-suburbs psychodrama Laura Smiles is fueled by it. As Laura, who loses the man she loves (Kip Pardue) and ends up married, miserable, and lashing out in a promiscuous fury, Petra Wright quivers with lust and fear an eclipse of the soul made terrifyingly real. Then the film leaps back, with surprising tenderness, to see who she was before. There's an unconvincing last-act twist, but this is the movie Little Children wanted to be.

