Directed by Todd Louiso
(R)
**
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Melanie Lynskey possesses a “gentle charisma,” said Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly. An effective screen performer since her debut opposite Kate Winslet in 1994’s Heavenly Creatures, the 35-year-old New Zealand actress uses her first starring role since to turn a cliché film character into a woman worth caring about. Lynskey plays Amy, a recent divorcée living with her wealthy parents in Connecticut and mired in a rut until a fling with a 19-year-old reawakens her. But because director Todd Louiso “shapes the movie to Lynskey’s rhythms,” every scene “breathes with a freshness” that belies its rote outline. Christopher Abbott is “exceptionally cast” as her much younger love interest, said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. Even when the supporting roles “verge on caricature” and the main story “starts to feel plotted as opposed to genuinely lived,” it remains a pleasure just to watch the two leads. When they’re together, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times, “there are inklings of a wilder, riskier, less predictable movie—one you may wish the characters could escape into.”
