There’s an intriguing bit of sociology afoot in “Laura Smiles,” a theme playing out behind the melodrama that will surely hit a nerve with anyone who’s moved to the city from one of America’s ubiquitous, indistinguishable suburbs.

Find a neighborhood with a name like “Bristlecone Pines” or “Hawk’s Nest,” and you’re sure to find a stretch of name-brand chains nearby — a Target followed by a Pier 1 Imports , a Wendy’s followed by a Taco Bell — with parking lots packed full of SUVs.

The majority of “Laura Smiles” takes place in just such a nowhere, but it is not where Laura (Petra Wright) finds much reason to smile. On the contrary, her joy is found in the back-alley bars, on the off-off-Broadway stages, and outside the late-night burger joints of a grimy-but-glorious Manhattan.

Early on, Laura sits down at a cheap diner with Chris (Kip Pardue), the man she’s come to love and agreed to marry. It’s obvious that both are struggling to stay afloat. They’re broke, but they’re happy — until disaster strikes on a bustling city street.

Flash forward nearly a decade and we find a much different Laura scrubbing the floors of her suburban mansion and shuttling her child around while her husband — a partner at an insurance agency — brings home office gossip in which she struggles to feign interest. It’s as far removed from the life she knew in New York as possible — and perhaps that’s the point. Robbed of her love in the unforgiving city, she has run the opposite direction and married the wealthy man.

Directed by Jason Ruscio, an NYU graduate now living in southern California, “Laura Smiles” has a clear affection for New York and the struggles of the aspiring artist. While Laura’s life in the film’s later portions projects all the trappings of moderate success — house, lawn, car, husband, child — Laura walks through her days like a zombie.

That’s why her imminent breakdown may not be such a terrible thing. She starts seeing a psychiatrist, recounting her nightly dreams about death, and seeks out an affair with a man who has known his fair share of tragedy. Later, when she crosses paths with a local teenager who bears a strong resemblance to Chris, something in her brain snaps.

Essentially a story about one woman’s mental breakdown, the great accomplishment in “Laura Smiles” is that Mr. Ruscio manages to keep the movie on a solid emotional foundation. A story of a dysfunctional woman slipping slowly into insanity could easily spiral off into far-fetched and exaggerated directions. But Ms. Wright brings to her part a gravitas that at first masks Laura’s true problems, making the movie less about a slow descent than about trying to decipher just where this vibrant woman went wrong.

To this end, Mr. Ruscio smartly uses an array of flashbacks to paint Laura as a darker and more complicated character than we thought. His jumps in time often take an awkward scene and work backward to expand its true meaning. In this way, the film becomes an ever-deepening exposé — shedding a brighter light with every scene on the void in Laura’s life that stretched from the loss of Chris to this moment of suburban perfection.

As hidden meaning is heaped upon hidden meaning, there is the sense of something profoundly intimate about this story, whether it’s the authentic way that Laura falls in love with Chris or her subtle, self-destructive behavior later on. And sure enough, digging for information about the movie, one learns that Mr. Ruscio and Ms. Wright were once married, and that the marriage collapsed after the couple moved from New York to southern California. Mr. Ruscio, it seems, wrote the film in part as a memoir of their dark times, but also to recapture those great moments that only occur early in a relationship.

It’s impossible not to sense the love behind many moments in “Laura Smiles,” in the way the camera regards Laura’s every glance and gesture and in the way she falls slowly but joyfully into the torrent with Chris. It’s this intimacy that draws us to her, that makes the later twists and turns, the sporadic jumps in time and temperament, cohere. Laura’s love, in the end, is not replaced by apathy, but by a vacuum of emotion that has filled the place in her heart where there once was something profound.

ssnyder@nysun.com