With his distinctly unsettling 1995 debut, Clean, Shaven, director Lodge Kerrigan suggested the clamorous mind of a schizophrenic through a sound mix that recalled David Lynch's Eraserhead in its low hums and peculiar undercurrents. From its steely, infinitely reflective high rises to its vacant, antiseptic interiors, Kerrigan's long-awaited follow-up, Claire Dolan, displays the same mastery of texture, even if its chilly spaces are more memorable than anything going on within them. In a daring and uninhibited performance, Mike Leigh regular Katrin Cartlidge (Naked, Career Girls) stars as a New York City prostitute who turns tricks to pay off debts owed to an insidious Irish gangster (Colm Meaney). With her thin, scowling lips and sharp features, Cartlidge seems unnaturally suited for the job, but she's developed a suitably wooden temperament and her oft-repeated come-ons to customers ("I miss having you inside of me," "I'd like to make you happy") are hilariously terse. But a few twists of fate, including a chance affair with Newark cabdriver Vincent D'Onofrio, motivate her to wriggle out of Meaney's control and pursue the possibility of a more fulfilling life. For all the meticulous detail Kerrigan invests in his audio-visual scheme, the relationships in Claire Dolan are thinly sketched and undernourished, though the intensity of the three leads keeps them from seeming perfunctory. But, as with the schizophrenic in Clean, Shaven, Kerrigan's main purpose is to immerse the viewer in a particular world, and he succeeds beautifully in Claire Dolan. While it's no revelation to claim that prostitution isn't a glamorous trade, his obsessive attention to detail goes further than any other film on the subject. Were they not so fraught with the potential for violence, the countless sexual encounters would seem oddly similar to a punch-clock job, as clinical and repetitive as a nurse's rounds.