Preceded by short:Crocodile Snap (Joe Wright, U.K., 1997). A child's impressionistic account of the day her mother left her father, featuring Secrets & Lies' Claire Rushbrook. (9 mins, Color, 35mm)Life for a midlands teenager in the 1970s is movingly (as in, fast) conveyed in this story of Jack (Joanna Ward), a girl with a boy's name and fleet feet. But placing in the upcoming track meet is only the kindest of the pressures on Jack, a dark-skinned beauty living in the poverty of her single mother's (Amanda Mealing) mysterious emotional malaise, and no less susceptible to the pressures of her age than the next, white, non-athletic girl. That would be Maxine, whose sexual curiosity is focused on prodding Jack into action. Anyone who is or was a teenager will recognize the rush into sexual awareness that comes with puberty, and the simultaneous desire to run as far as possible in the other direction. In the current cinema of "ladism" this is a refreshing and frank exploration of the lasses. After all, how close do the lads ever really get to the "kitchen sink"? (JB)