Weird on the Outside

Stoehr (Crosses) seems out to shock with this sordid sortie through the strip joints of New York City. Tracey-a beautiful, brilliant, privileged teenager-has everything except the love of her divorced parents. So she runs off to the city and, with remarkable ease, finds herself a room in a fleabag hotel and lands a job as a topless dancer. Her coworkers in the flesh biz are, on the whole, supportive and friendly; the clients tend toward the lewd and crude. Much of the story is taken up with a repetitious accounting of Tracey's piecemeal earnings (``A flash might get me a dollar, but I know I'll get at least two by sensually rubbing slow circles in the skin below my navel,'' she says in a relatively tame moment). Tracey's descent into booze, cocaine and ever-riskier business counterpoints a murkily developed theme that has something to do with gaining independence or female power; the irony here is never certain. The conclusion trumpets confusion-after being brutally beaten, Tracey returns to her father's home, where she mulls things over: ``Not that every girl has to strip to become a woman.... But it worked for me. And even though I hated dancing naked sometimes, I also liked it.'' Ages 14-up. (Feb.)