When Thelen turns up at the bedroom window of her “real” true love (Craig Wasson) early in the movie and cheerfully offers to sleep with him, Wasson refuses, not only because he’s a high school kid who’s a little afraid of her—but also because he’s too much in love with his idea of her to want to make it real. By the time they finally do come back together, years later, they’ve both been through bad scenes, through madness, drug abuse, and the trauma of the war in Vietnam.
