Whatever

(Columbia TriStar)

Susan Skoog's uncompromising achievement focuses on two 18-year-olds -- budding artist Anna (Liza Weil) and her bad-girl pal Brenda (Chad Morgan) -- in a bleak early-'80s New Jersey suburb that offers little but crass males, fractured families, and booze and rock and roll. Skoog records the details of dead-end teenage partying of a decade and a half ago with rueful, sometimes wry authority.