The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love

Punky 17-year-old Randy Dean (Hollomon) is having a desultory affair with a married woman, lives with her aunt in a 'regular lesbo household', and daydreams to the strains of Zeppelin and Hendrix. Evie Roy (Parker) is a glamorous, well-to-do African-American who lives with her mum, prefers Mozart and Walt Whitman, and is getting tired of her insensitive, immature boyfriend. Though they're both in their senior year at the same high school they don't meet until Evie's car starts giving her trouble and she calls in at the garage where Randy works. Still, it's an encounter that will change their lives. This feature debut offers a perky look at the trials of first love as experienced by two very different girls from two very different backgrounds. If there's nothing hugely original about the story, there's a lot of charm here, thanks largely to the easy naturalism of the performances. This is such a conventional telling of a modern-day fairy story that its (vaguely) subversive content should offend virtually no one. There's tenderness, humour, lyricism and a heartfelt plea for universal tolerance; and if the farcical finale seems obvious and contrived, it's hard to resist a movie so gentle that its most shocking transgression is the unwitting wasting of a bottle of Château Latour.