Twentysomething Gretchen (Sara Paul) is a crossword addict who has challenged herself to complete 77 puzzles in 24 hours. Almost pathologically dependent on noise, she inexplicably chooses to work in the New York subway system, channeling its assaultive inhospitability into pure cognitive adrenaline. For someone obsessed with words, Gretchen exists in an almost pre-verbal state, her only meaningful contact with other people being the messages her mother leaves on her answering machine. For Naderi, Gretchen is clearly an alter ego: a maniacally driven perpetual-motion machine. She could also be a distant kin to Amiroo, the young protagonist of Naderi`s <The Runner>. Gretchen`s psychological opacity is more than compensated for by the almost intrusive physical intimacy that Naderi achieves with his roving camera.