Little Birds

LITTLE BIRDS is achingly beautiful and haunting, a tone poem of bleakness that paints a realistic picture of teenage girls yearning for a way out of their dismal days. Panabaker is remarkable, and Temple even more so, never once hitting a wrong note; their characters brim with angst, fear, hope, rage, and excitement, sometimes all at once. First-time writer-director Elgin James infuses his own real-life gang background into a story that's both disheartening for its matter-of-fact violence and uplifting for its portrayal of two friends who share such similar lives and yet are headed for disparate directions.

And yet both of the main characters, as well as their families (Leslie Mann has a fine turn as Lily's mother, who wants to do right but doesn't always know how), are portrayed with humanity and breathtaking honesty. The film is strongest in its grittier moments and when that grit means tenderness, even if it does give some characters the short shrift. Not that it dilutes the movie's power much. Little Birds soars toward the horizon, and it nearly gets there.