Justin Chang

There have been countless coming-of-age movies about the summer that changed everything, a season marked by a move to a new town, a fleeting but memorable romance, or a shattering crisis.

It's not easy to make a film in this vein that feels fresh or personal, but the Canadian writer-director Sophie Romvari has somehow done both with her exquisite, achingly sad debut feature, Blue Heron.

It's based on events from her own life, which she previously explored in her 2020 documentary short, Still Processing.

That title could just as well have applied to Blue Heron, in which she peers back into her past and tries to make sense of what she finds.

Most of the story takes place over one summer in the late 1990s.

Eight-year-old Sasha, played by Elul Guven, has just moved with her Hungarian immigrant parents and three older brothers to a small town on Vancouver Island.

Life here is idyllic in many ways.

The island is beautiful and peaceful, and Sasha enjoys spending time outdoors with her family and making new friends.

But a cloud hovers over everything and seems to darken as the summer goes on.

Sasha's oldest brother, Jeremy, played by Edik Bedos, isn't adjusting well to the move, to put it mildly.

He's peevish with his parents and siblings, and acts out in ways that range from annoying to dangerous.

He climbs up on the roof.

He wanders off without telling anyone.

He shoplifts and gets arrested.

In one relatively mild instance of misbehavior, Jeremy lies down on the front porch one afternoon, keeping so still that a neighbor calls the house, alarmed that he might be dead.

Sasha's parents are sensitively played by Adam Tompa and Iringo Reti, who show us a loving marriage that's come under all kinds of strain.

There's Jeremy, of course, but there are also the challenges of settling into a new home in a still fairly new country.

sasha's father spends a lot of time working on his computer and his wife is frustrated at having to do most of the housework and child-rearing but romvari doesn't exaggerate these pressure points nor does she overplay jeremy's behavior

The film is meticulous about showing the family's genuinely happy times, including those rare moments when Jeremy cracks a smile and comes out of his shell.

It's as if Ramvari wants to be fair to Jeremy, to not let his diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder define him.