The movie is a remake of the 1961 film of the same name, written by William Inge and starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty.
The film begins in 1927-1928 in the pre-Depression era in Kansas when oil is making many landowners wealthy.
Her family owns a general store and maintains a middle-class lifestyle, with a few investments in oil.
Bud is an athletic, handsome but not academically talented senior whose family is very wealthy from oil investments and pumping on their ranch.
A messy encounter on New Year's Eve 1928 changes the trajectory of their relationship and puts Deanie in a state of deep mental funk.
Bud, who has his hands full trying to corral his older, reckless sister, and assert himself in front of his domineering father, is on a mental decline of his own.
What happens at the dance results in Deanie's hospitalization and subsequent commitment to a mental institution for treatment.
The film is a coming of age story and parallels the lines in Wordsworth's poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood".
The critic praised the performances of both Gilbert and O'Reilly and called the direction of Richard C. Sarafian 'sensitively unobtrusive'.