From Up Here

BENCHWARMERS White, left, and Segal spend quality time.

In the first 20 minutes of From Up Here, Liz Flahive’s exceptionally skilled and affecting family drama about second chances, three women appear in bras. First, sassy highschooler Lauren (Aya Cash) storms in half-dressed, complaining that her nice-guy stepfather, Daniel (Brian Hutchison), didn’t do the laundry. Next, mother Grace (Julie White) enters topless, throwing on her clothes for work. Shortly after, Grace’s world-traveling sister, Caroline (Arija Bareikis), changes her sweaty T-shirt in front of a flustered Daniel. I’m not sure what all this female sartorial nonchalance is meant to portend, but it might create sexual tension for the teen boy of the family, Kenny (Tobias Segal). The kid is dangerously buttoned-up.

Kenny is the cringing, ever-mortified center of the story, and he spends much of the time looking unbearably ill-at-ease, trying to placate his family and teachers, all of whom treat him as if he were a ticking bomb. To be fair, Kenny recently did something at school to earn this wariness (no spoilers here). Showing a surgeonlike precision for character giveaways and mood shifts, Flahive dramatizes the tortures of domestic life, showing how the urge to escape can lead to violence and curdled rage. Her script is full of quick-witted jokes (especially in the mischievous persona of Will Rogers, who plays Lauren’s dorky suitor), but the final scenes are near-harrowing, as the half-capable, half-crazed mother and her humiliated son acknowledge their mutual state of damage. Under Leigh Silverman’s spotless direction, a perfect cast does this smart, moving script justice by baring all.