Working from a screenplay by his late father, legendary filmmaker John Cassavetes, Nick Cassavetes' second film as a director stars Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn as a down-and-out white-trash couple as hopelessly in love with each other as they are irresponsible and self-destructive. After Wright Penn is raped and beaten by a neighbor, Penn has a psychotic episode, shoots an EMR worker, and ends up spending 10 years in a mental hospital. In the interim, Wright Penn cleans up and marries responsible, wealthy, somewhat shady businessman John Travolta and settles into a comfortable life as an upper-middle-class wife and mother. But when Penn is released and comes looking for her, Wright Penn is faced with a choice: to leave the soothing, predictable life she leads or voyage once again to the edge of sanity with the man she never stopped loving. At once grittily realistic and hopelessly romantic, She's So Lovely walks a fine line between artiness and pretension, and to its credit, it seldom falters. Anchored by a brilliant performance by Penn—and a powerful one by Wright Penn, as well as stalwart supporting turns by the ever-reliable Harry Dean Stanton and Travolta—She's So Lovely is consistently strong, subversive, and unpredictable. Cassavetes' grip on the material is surprisingly sure-handed for such an inexperienced director, but he's been blessed by a screenplay that proves a wonderfully fitting swan song to his father's career as one of Hollywood's most uncompromising, enduring visionaries.