Referencing Solondz's previous Welcome to the Dollhouse,[2] it was nominated for the Golden Lion award at the 61st Venice International Film Festival.

The protagonist, a 13-year-old girl named Aviva, is played by eight different actors of different ages, races, and genders during the course of the film, which features an array of secondary characters.

The film opens with a funeral for Dawn Wiener (the protagonist from Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse), who went to college, gained a lot of weight and acne, and committed suicide at age 20 after she became pregnant from a date rape.

While the abortion is technically successful, it is implied via a fractured, emotional conversation with the doctor (Stephen Singer) that Aviva can no longer have children.

She is eventually found by the Sunshine Family, a Christian fundamentalist foster home that cares for disordered orphans and runaways.

The film then skips ahead several months later to Aviva back home with her parents, planning her next birthday party.

[3][4] With regard to Solondz's employment of multiple performers to play a single character, film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his positive review, "If the movie is a moral labyrinth, it is paradoxically straightforward and powerful in the moment; each individual story has an authenticity and impact of its own.

"[5] Contrarily, New York Times film critic A. O. Scott concluded in his negative review, "[...] Aviva's appearance changes -- from black to white, from fat to thin, from brunette to redhead, and at one point, to Jennifer Jason Leigh.