On the surface, this appears to be yet another American high-school flick, but there's much more to "Crime + Punishment in Suburbia" than you'd normally expect from the genre.

In this rather uncomfortable blend of Dostoyevsky's 19th century classic tragedy "Crime and Punishment" and a US teen melodrama, Roseanne (Keena) is a popular schoolgirl, who lives in a grand house and whose boyfriend Jimmy (DeBello) is the school's top American footballer. So her life's perfect, right? Wrong.

As the film progresses, we learn more about her unhappy home life, through the eyes of the narrator, Vincent, a classmate of her's. He's a philosophising gothic loner (going through his "gloom stage," his mother says), totally obsessed with Roseanne, covering his bedroom walls with the photos he takes of her everywhere she goes.

It's not until her stepfather Fred (Ironside) catches her mother Maggie (Barkin) cheating with barman Chris (American Psycho's Wright) that things really start going downhill fast.

Her fickle and image-conscious friends start ignoring her when a drunken Fred attacks Chris at a café, and soon after Maggie moves out of the family home Fred rapes Roseanne. Her reaction is to seek revenge by roping Jimmy in to help her kill her stepfather.

Suddenly, when real life resumes, the couple are consumed by guilt. Jimmy cracks up and loses control of his superstar demeanour. Roseanne ends up shutting off from everyone except Vincent, who's turned from a creepy stalker to her guardian angel.

Updating classics is always a minefield, but this arguably pretentious film isn't targeted at the kind of people who'd be familiar with the novel, so it's unlikely to offend purists.

Splitting it into chapters and packing it with mature, if unnaturally wordy dialogue, director Rob Schmidt manages to retain a literary feel. With many stylish tricks and thoughtful imagery this isn't an easy film to watch, but with warm and moody performances it's quite rewarding.