The director Gregg Araki's film, based on the sensational (in every sense of the word) novel by Scott Heim, retains the lo-fi road-movie atmosphere of his previous works ("The Living End," "The Doom Generation"), but there's a heartening maturity this time around. The story concerns an adolescent hustler (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who's haunted by child abuse, and his former Little League teammate (Brady Corbet), who's attempting to find an answer to the amnesia he suffers when trying to recall a past incident. The actors capture the sad yearning of the characters, and Michelle Trachtenberg and Elisabeth Shue give strong supporting performances. Although this is Araki's best work, the film is finally too dreamy to dramatize the urgent storytelling of the novel. It drifts with an on-the-road aimlessness, losing its initial sexy, dark power.