"Judy Berlin is only autobiographical in the sense that the elements of the film are elements of suburbia that I've always wanted to talk about," says first-time feature director Eric Mendelsohn, taking a break from stuffing press kits into the envelopes scattered across the floor of his New York City apartment.

Mendelsohn is, indeed, a child of the suburbs, a Long Island native of Old Bethpage whose aspirations to become a painter were side-tracked when he served as an assistant costume designer on a number of Woody Allen films.

In 1992, he made his directorial breakthrough with a 26-minute film, Through An Open Window, starring Anne Meara and narrated by F. Murray Abraham, which premiered at Sundance and went on to screen in Un Certain Regard.

Judy Berlin also premiered at Sundance this year, garnering Mendelsohn the award for Best Director. "It's a funny thing about film festivals," Mendelsohn says. "I have to talk about this movie that is way in the past, and what I'm really thinking about is making another movie. It's like a trussed-up corpse, you know?"

Not that Judy Berlin is anywhere near being a corpse. In many ways it's about the myriad of possibilities belonging to each and every life, whether lived in the suburbs or elsewhere. The film features a crackerjack cast with Bob Dishy playing high-school principal Arthur Gold, and Madeline Kahn as his wife. Their 28-year-old son, David (Aaron Harnick), a fledgling film-maker of sorts, doesn't want to leave the house. Then David meets Judy Berlin (Edie Falco), an aspiring actress ready to take her chances in Hollywood. Their dreams both complement and collide; Arthur succumbs to the attentions of Judy's mother (Barbara Barrie), and a long-simmering mutual attraction threatens to come to the boil. Julie Kavner and Anne Meara round out the exceptional ensemble.

The film takes place in one 24-hour period, a day cast into eerie darkness by the occurrence of a solar eclipse. "The eclipse was pure fun," says Mendelsohn. "I made sure everything could work totally without it." Which doesn't mean that the device was totally superfluous. "When I was a kid and we had power shortages," Mendelsohn recalls, "everybody would come out of their houses with candles. People shared. We sat around and talked. It's like in a blackout; inhibitions are reduced. I'm interested in how people react to these tiny cataclysms." Jeffrey R Sipe