I loved Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse, so I looked forward to this movie with great anticipation. My hopes were dashed, however. Here we have two unrelated stories with relatively boring characters, neither of which is allowed to fully develop. Both had potential in their own right, but they just seem to go nowhere. I desperately wanted to like the movie. I gave it every chance to impress me. But the "shocking" stuff, like the racial issues in "Fiction", wasn't really that shocking, yet it came across as being more done for shock value than the well-defined, nuanced characters of the much more shocking Happiness.