Nothing is more embarrassing than earnestness run amok, which probably explains why the painfully intimate Jane Doe is such an awful little film. As allergic to irony and self-awareness as Vincent Gallo's similarly terrible, inexplicably acclaimed Buffalo 66, which it sometimes resembles, Jane Doe stars a pre-stardom Calista Flockhart as the sort of wispy dream girl about whom every sad-sack would-be artiste fantasizes. Flighty, unhinged, and shot through with joie de vivre, Flockhart does exactly what life-affirming women in these films always do: She enters the life of a sad-sack writer-bartender (miscast nebbish Christopher Peditto, who coincidentally shares a last name with director Paul Peditto), teaches him to seize the day, shoplifts things, and breaks his heart with her self-destructive ways. It's a masochistic male fantasy in much the way Buffalo 66 was, complete with long stretches of Cassavetes-inspired shouting matches among beautiful loners along the way, and it's all but unwatchable. Alternating between low-budget plainness and obnoxious film-school artiness, Jane Doe has one thing going for it: a lead performance by Flockhart that's fascinating in its sheer, misguided intensity. Her character might be little more than a pathetic male salvation fantasy, but Flockhart's fearlessly over-the-top performance is as strangely compelling as a six-car pile-up.