The second feature by writer-director Sayles, Lianna presents a very contemporary tale of a philandering college professor whose wife finds solace in the arms of another woman. Sayles focuses on the repercussions of Lianna’s switch of sexual preference and the prevailing double standards that govern attitudes even within the seemingly enlightened academic community. (In one of the film’s lighter moments, Sayles appears as a womanizing film instructor who tries to seduce Lianna, unable to comprehend that she is simply not interested in men.) As with his earlier The Return of the Secaucus Seven, the raw quality of the film’s low-budget production adds what critic Kevin Thomas termed “a heightened sense of authenticity”—a quality that in turn complements the work’s progressive tone and “bemused, humane sensibility.”