Lawn Dogs (1997) - A "Sling Blade"-esque Southern Gothic dark fantasy-drama starring Sam Rockwell as a redneck landscaper that touches on class issues in suburban Kentucky when he befriends a young girl from affluent family.
If I had a nickel for every time Sam Rockwell played a rural Southerner character in a '90s indie film, I'd have two nickels, with this film and 1996's Box of Moonlight by Jim Jarmusch cinematographer turned writer/director Tom DiCillo.
For a British produced and directed film, it does a great job at capturing the zeitgeist of the contemporary American South, largely due to the screenplay by playwright and Kentucky native Naomi Wallace, and it actually being shot entirely on-location in Kentucky.
The film follows Devon (Mischa Barton), a young girl living in a affluent/middle-class gated suburban neighborhood in Kentucky whose parents (Christopher McDonald and Kathleen Quinlan), obsessed with their public image, want their "lonely" daughter to make friends with other kids in the neighborhood.
She instead befriends Trent, a poverty-stricken redneck landscaper living illegally in a trailer in public woodlands, who mows lawns in the neighborhood. Trent gets exploited and discriminated by the neighborhood's residents such as Pam, a young woman who he has a secret affair with, Nash, an ex-cop security guard who belittles him as white trash, and Sean, a closeted gay man who discriminates him but also flirts with him and racially discriminates as public service workers in the neighborhood with his friend Brett, who is arguably the worst character in this film for reasons not worth explaining in further depth.
The film touches on really tough issues that may not be comfortable for everyone to watch, but I found the film to be a very engaging character study, and one of the few films I've seen that deals on class discrimination.
There are some light-hearted moments of course, such as Sam diving off a bridge to Dwight Yoakam and dancing on his pickup truck with Mischa to Bruce Springsteen, and there is a "happy ending" with some fantasy whimsical up to interpretation, lol.