Carnelle Scott is a restless Mississippi girl looking for a life change. She decides to enter a beauty pageant, which her cousin had won years before. Despite a lack of support from those close to her Carnelle remains determined. She enlists the help of a seamstress to outfit her for the competition, while rebuffing the advances of predatory men, as she aims to bring home the crown.
To salvage his job and the circulation of his magazine, an editor decides to publish an expose revealing the inside story of the famed cheerleading squad and plants his reporter/girlfriend among the girls.
A mysterious power failure in a small mountain town coincides with the disappearance of one of its most eccentric young residents. Mystery piles upon mystery as his family and friends search for him, fail, and ultimately try to forget about him, an undertaking that results in many unexpected, and in some cases bizarre, effects on the town's already peculiar community.
A "documentary" following Hippo, a full-time mime. A portrait of how his love life, friendships and quest to be accepted by society in a world where he is at a loss for words.