A memory of the automobile in which a father drove away from his family provides the title for Blue Car but no hint of the power of writer-director Karen Moncrieff's superb feature debut.

A quietly devastating song.

Karen Moncrieff makes an extraordinary debut as a feature film writer and director with this observant drama about a budding teenage poet who, amid many traumas, finds the courage to become herself and set out as an artist.

There are no surprise twists, no characters who rise above themselves, no cheap happy endings. There are just people struggling with emotions and situations they think are beyond their control.

The ending of the film is as calculated and cruel as a verbal assault by a Neil LaBute character.

Bruckner's restrained performance reveals a girl drowning in her own lack of self-esteem. When she finally comes up for air, she shatters the surface with a force that, in the hands of a less thoughtful director, could send her spinning down the melodramatic road to ruin.

Moncrieff offers a rare, unromantic take on female adolescence as sharp as a razor: It cuts right to the bone.

Even with its drawbacks, Blue Car remains an intimate, thoughtful drama, with a performance no one is likely to forget.

This melancholy, insightfully scripted coming-of-age drama is moving without being manipulative and makes an assured calling card for writer-director Karen Moncrieff.

Bruckner's Meg is that rarity, a credible screen teenager.

Certainly no feel-good flick of the summer. But it's always tough and honest.

Moncrieff's insistence on her subject suggests conviction -- about her contribution and about her cast. Both beliefs are pretty much justified.

For the most part, though, Ms. Moncrieff has given us a portrait of a young woman with a luminous soul.

Mr. Strathairn's complex, exquisitely nuanced portrayal of a man who goes over the line allows his character to be both hero and villain, sometimes at once.