Clean, Shaven 1993

Peter Winter, Peter Greene, is a man newly released from a mental institution who must rejoin a world that feels almost foreign to him. The film opens with abstract images and sounds that mirror the director’s interpretation of schizophrenia, laying a dreamlike, unsettling groundwork for his fragile grasp on reality. Peter’s primary mission becomes clear from the start: find his daughter, Nicole Winter, Jennifer MacDonald. The search propels him onto the road, and a sudden moment of misfortune arrives when his car is struck by a soccer ball. A young girl watches him from beyond the windshield, and when he steps out, a chorus of screams fills the air—an ominous cue that lingers even as the scene cuts away. In the trunk, Peter carries a large orange bag, a detail that will haunt the narrative with its implied weight of tragedy.

Once home, Peter’s senses unspool in a barrage of noises that seem to invade his very being. He becomes convinced that there is a transmitter buried beneath the skin on his head, a notion so persistent that he gradually strips away the idea of safety around him. His relationship with mirrors is strained to the breaking point; he covers up any reflective surface he can access, as if denying a reflection that might betray his own mind. The world outside his home grows increasingly hostile, leading him to encase his car in newspaper, a symbolic act of shielding himself from the outside and from memory alike.

At the same time, Mrs. Winter, Megan Owen, remains a steady domestic force who is deeply unsettled by Peter’s condition. She treats him like a child and resists any notion that he should be permitted to reunite with his daughter, adding another layer of tension to Peter’s fragile search.

As Peter wanders through various towns and experiences, he becomes inadvertently entangled in the investigation of another young girl’s murder. The detective on the case, Jack McNally, Robert Albert, finds the scene bereft of clear evidence, leaving him at a standstill and frustrated by how little connects the crime to any solid lead. The mystery thickens as Peter’s own movements draw suspicion, and soon he becomes a person of interest in the case despite the absence of conclusive proof linking him to the crime.

The plot crescendos when Peter, in a bid to protect his daughter, abducts Nicole from her adoptive mother. This act pulls McNally closer, and the tension between pursuit and protection sharpens the film’s emotional stakes. As the confrontation escalates, Peter brandishes his weapon in a desperate bid to shield his child from what he perceives as danger. McNally, convinced that he is seeing the dead body of Peter’s daughter, opens fire, ending Peter’s life in a moment of high-stakes peril.

In the aftermath, McNally discovers that the girl is safe, and he fires his gun into the air to avoid charges for unnecessary violence. He then opens the orange bag, only to find nothing but crumpled newspaper inside, a stark reminder of the fragility of perception and the way each character’s mind can distort reality.

Throughout the film, the lines between sanity, reality, and responsibility blur as Peter battles to reclaim his place in a world that has grown alien to him. The narrative threads — a search for a missing daughter, an unclear accusation, and a family haunted by the specter of mental illness — weave together to present a meditation on perception, fear, and the consequences of actions taken in the name of love. The city around Peter becomes a labyrinth of sensory overload, misinterpretations, and fragments of truth that never quite align, leaving both him and the audience to question what is real and what is imagined in the shadows of a troubled mind.