In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.
Johnny and his young nephew forge a tenuous but transformational relationship when they embark on a cross-country trip to see life away from Los Angeles.
Appliance follows Sophie Weiss, whose house and its malfunctioning appliances become extensions of her biological self deconstruction. Just after a week of moving into her new home, Sophie's sense of reality takes on a distorted form as she begins to believe her house is living and breathing around her. Perhaps a result of her isolation? The side effect of a fertility treatment? Or even an outside antagonist? Appliance makes light of the disturbing history shaping the American delusion that homeownership is both an accessible tool for social mobility and a means by which one can value their self-worth.
