Exiting Left (1998)

Exiting Left is an offbeat holiday film that mixes voyeurism, love, and death with political intrigue and social perceptions. Sadie Crisp, an obsessive young woman in search of both her past and her path through life, returns to her home town and finds much more than she expects. Sadie discovers that her relatives have moved away and begins to gather her own surrogate family. She takes in her boss Brenda and her son after they leave an abusive domestic situation, and befriends Wren, a homeless boy forced out by his own family. While helping her new friends and learning about their lives, Sadie renews her friendship with a local lounge lady named Violet and gets to know Nolan her next door neighbor. Her dead friend Cooper has a few things to say too. Through Sadie's obsession to know about the lives of others, the viewer is drawn into tales of blackmail, devotion, redemption, and the inequalities that money can cause. Exiting Left assures that you will never look at coming home for the holidays quite the same way again.