New Jersey. Dawn Wiener, that gawky seventh-grader, can't even get raped. She's threatened right enough, but her would-be assailant wouldn't follow through. Even when she turned up on time. Still, it's the most notice anyone paid Dawn for years. Certainly not her nerdy, college-obsessed brother. And not Mom, who dotes fill-time on Dawn's saccharine younger sister, Missy.

Todd Solondz's film is a fresh, nasty US indie that drives a steam-roller through the best years of your life. When the nerd forms a band because it'll look good on his resume, Dawn forms a doe-eyed crush on hunky singer-guitarist Brandon that no one takes seriously. When she refuses to tell the ghastly Missy she loves her, she watches a favourite dessert gleefully divided between her hateful siblings. So, when little sis is kidnapped, to a man we hope she's fallen into some really terrible hands.

Young Heather Matarazzo is remarkable as Dawn, this seething cesspool of resentment and incomprehension in a gaudy floral dress and Coke-bottle glasses. She's a natural victim, life's perpetual also-ran, destined never to achieve any ways round, and Matarazzo is painfully good. Her supports, especially Angela Pietropinto as Mrs Wiener, are formidable.

Solondz's screenplay makes few concessions either. Heather doesn't live in sit-com land; not everything's fixable in 25 minutes. It's not to give much away to say that the film ends with her just as angry as she was to begin with. This is The Wonder Years where no one's learned anything but how to fuck Dawn over. As a celebration of the "excruciating torment" of childhood, Welcome To The Dollhouse is all too believable.