Not everyone in Los Angeles had Golden Globes fever this past weekend. Hundreds of film industry types were schmoozing and seeing movies at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Big names turned up again this year - everyone from Michael Douglas to Natalie Portman - and attention was given to films that might otherwise have trouble finding traction in this awards-saturated season, like Peter Weir’s The Way Back. Another of those films is Daydream Nation, an angst-y tale about a brainy and manipulative girl (Kat Dennings) who shakes up a small town when she begins a love affair with her teacher (Josh Lucas). The film won over many of the festival's younger fans, who were, lets be honest, in short supply at the open-to-the-public festival in one of America’s retirement hotbeds.

“I was listening to Daydream Nation a lot when I was writing the movie. I wanted to make a film that had the feeling of that record,” writer/director Mike Goldbach said of his decision to use Sonic Youth’s seminal 1988 record as the title of his film. He evened named one of the characters Thurston, an homage to Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore. “It’s beautiful and ethereal, but then all of a sudden the movie will swerve, just like the record, and become violent and atonal,” he continued.

On Saturday, a sold-out third screening of the film enthralled movie fans, who swooned over the film’s music-nerd soundtrack. Two Sonic Youth songs, “5 or 6” songs from Devendra Banhart, a Sebadoh track, a Beach House song, a Stars song, several songs by Metric’s Emily Haines (including a cover of Neil Young’s “Expecting to Fly”), and a Lou Reed number are all featured in the film and on the forthcoming soundtrack, from Last Gang Records.

The film was scored by Broken Social Scene’s Ohad Benchetrit, but despite the presence of a stellar songwriting throughout the film, the story mostly unfolds sans sound, musing on sex, death, and relationships in a rain-soaked small town. “It’s a dreamy, hazy, occasionally violent and scary bipolar movie,” Goldbach said. “When you name a film after an album by Sonic Youth, it sets the bar really high,” the director continued. “You want to live up to the promise.”

This past weekend in Palm Springs, Goldbach’s film did just that.

Top picture: Kat Dennings talks to director Mike Goldbach on the set of Daydream Nation.