Bliss (Page) is a 17-year-old girl who finds an outlet for a passion she never knew she had when she attends her first roller derby game. She can’t skate (at least, not at first) and surrounded by women twice her size – Valkyries on wheels – she seems a wisp of a thing; but somehow, this is for her. She continues her outwardly depressing small-town Texas life (serving slabs of dead pig at a crummy roadside diner, entering painful beauty pageants to please her mother) but once a week she escapes to the big city and becomes Babe Ruthless, grudgingly accepted team member and, eventually, star of the Hurl Scouts – an admittedly bottom-rung team who have long since given up trying to win.

Since this is a sports movie, we know they’ll claw their way out of the mud, and into the finals – but there’s not a moment along the way that feels clichéd. I’m at a loss to describe how much better this film is than it needs to be – how seriously Drew Barrymore as director has taken the story, and with what whole-heartedness she (and Ellen Page – still convincing as a teenager) have thrown themselves into it. I think this film will before long be an acknowledged classic, and that Barrymore will soon be better known as a first-rate director than as an actress. Watch the movie now, so you can honestly say you saw that coming.