‘Not a Virgin Anymore’ Dulls Down Sexy Topic

The second feature from San Francisco-based writer-director Sarah Jacobson, “Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore,” is a study of slacker culture in a Midwestern city, but despite its tantalizing title, Jacobson doesn’t give her characters much of interest to say or do.

The film’s protagonist, Mary Jane (her friends just call her Jane), is a high school senior from the suburbs who commutes into the city to work part time in a revival-house theater. Although she’s an honor student, Jane (Lisa Gerstein) is not too interested in traditional high school activities like the prom; she’s far happier hanging out with her co-workers at the theater, a motley crew of ambition-impaired twentysomethings that serves as a surrogate family to the teen.

The opening scene is of Jane losing her virginity in a cemetery (somehow not as exotic as it sounds) with a good-looking but completely insensitive acquaintance. Disappointed with the experience, Jane resolves never to have sex again. But talking with her friends at the theater about their “first times” reinvigorates her interest; they all talk about sex in the way characters in Henry Jaglom’s “Eating” discuss food though with much less passion. Jane gets sympathy from the theater’s manager Dave (Greg Cruikshank), a kind, gay man who at the ripe age of 30 serves as the group’s paternal figure.

More importantly, she gets advice from the forthright and big-sisterly Erika, a tattooed punk princess (musician Beth Allen, who gives the film’s best and most spirited performance).

Jane is destined to have one more lover before she leaves for an unnamed college in Boston, yet another co-worker named Tom (Chris Enright). Tom, who also functions as the linchpin for the rest of the film, including two other plot points that wouldn’t be fair to give away, is nice to look at but otherwise a dullard.

In fact, a lot of the characters and what happens to them is dull. In their down time at the theater, the young men spend as much time as possible getting as drunk as possible. The young women? Mostly they watch the guys get wasted. Wow.

The film also feels dated, which isn’t surprising since Jacobson made it in 1996 (it played at Sundance in 1997 and has been on the indie and art-house circuit since). But even three years ago the slacker film genre had peaked, and this film doesn’t come close in originality to, say, Kevin Smith’s “Clerks” or Richard Linklater’s “Slackers.”

Jacobson did, however, manage to make a decent-looking film on a shoestring budget, and she does have a fan base that includes many punk rock musicians (hence the film’s killer soundtrack, which includes cuts from Babes in Toyland and Mudhoney).

* Unrated. Times guidelines: much profanity; frank talk about sexuality; some nudity.

‘Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore’

Lisa Gerstein: Jane

Beth Allen: Erika

Greg Cruikshank: Dave

Chris Enright: Tom

Station Wagon Productions presents a film by Sarah Jacobson. Writer, director, producer, editor Sarah Jacobson. Director of photography Adam Dodds. Music supervisor Tracy McKnight. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.