With her dreams of becoming a professional ballerina decimated by the accidental death of her mother, Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles) is forced to move from her quiet Midwestern town to her fathers ghetto apartment on the south side of Chicago. The stark urban environments contrast of race & class compound Saras loss & her misplaced guilt, which are both exacerbated by the fact that her mother had been en route to her dance performance at the time of her death. But when she meets Derek (Sean