What is outside of the parameters of Holmes’ world is the 2007-08 financial crisis, which forms the backdrop for All We Had. At the start of the film, Rita and Ruthie have fled another shady boyfriend (“my mother was better at loving men than choosing them,” Ruthie intones in voiceover) and bills they just can’t pay. Running on fumes—figuratively and literally, in their battered car—they attempt to dine-and-ditch at a local diner on the road, only to have their car break down in front of their marks. Maybe that’s cynical, especially considering that the solution—they’ll stay in town for a while, working off their breakfast and then saving up to move—ultimately helps ground them. But these kinds of scenes are where Rita is fascinating: She’s scrappy, unapologetic, hard-edged until too many disasters force her to break down into spontaneous self-loathing. Yet, the film only dips into these moments of complexity, instead settling for more of an archetypal “immature mom and too-mature daughter” dynamic as telegraphed by Rita’s constant reapplication of too-young-for-her electric blue eyeliner. It’s no wonder that Ruthie resents the trappings of suburban life and feels more comfortable on the road: When they settle down is when they get into trouble, thanks to Rita’s bad decisions. They’re all made with the best of intentions, but she’s too busy thinking about that million-dollar get that she fails to create a life for her and Ruthie out of realistic building blocks. Rita goes on and on about Ruthie being so smart that she’ll be a doctor, or the president someday, when she really should be focusing on Ruthie’s struggles to fit in at school, especially when she has to skip the ninth grade (one imagines more for saving money than because of Ruthie’s considerable smarts). And yet, the movie passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. Rita and Ruthie argue about settling down versus moving on (with Ruthie eventually exploding at her mother that “you turn every good thing you touch to shit!”), and Ruthie finds a more suitable mentor figure in waitress Pam. Lindley is saddled with a transgender character with some clichés—she wants to move to New York City to be an actress; her YouTube username is Peter Pam—but still brings heart and resilience to the role, especially around the shits in town who throw slurs (and worse) at her. Rita’s interactions with other women are fascinating, as she bristles under their judgment yet levels her own uneducated prejudices against someone like Pam or Patti (Judy Greer, tragically underused), a perpetually pregnant neighbor with biracial children. Unfortunately, the circumstances that make Rita finally accept Pam as a woman are the kind of overused narrative shorthand that needs to be torched. Even when Luke Wilson enters the picture as a more suitable love interest for Rita—the local dentist, a recovering alcoholic—Ruthie and Rita’s conversations are less about him than about Ruthie’s fears of getting trapped by another guy.