Shot mainly in Minnesota over two and a half years, this independent first feature by Daniel Appleby, for all its failings (unfunny jokes about failed suicides, some strained flashbacks and daydreams, overplayed sex and violence for giggly John Waters effects), gets somewhat better as it proceeds. The main characters are a battered wife (Ginger Lynn Allen), her abusive husband (Chris Mulkey), the wife’s female lover (Elizabeth Saltarrelli), and a traumatized cuckold (Christopher Denton) obsessed with suicide whom the wife’s lover treats as a friend and sidekick. In a desperate effort to cure the battered wife of her dependency on her husband, the lover kidnaps her with the aid of her friend, and they drive her cross-country to a deprogrammer (Karen Black). If you buy all the strained efforts to be outrageous, this is a reasonably watchable, quirky road movie. (JR)