Home Before Dark

Set in 1960s rural Massachusetts, Home Before Dark is local writer and director Maureen Foley's semi-autobiographical account of a family in crisis. Eleven-year-old Nora (Stoughton native Stephanie Castellarin, in an inspired debut), the eldest child in her working-class Irish family, is already coping with typical prepubescent angst and occasional afternoon detention with Sister Concilia (a wickedly good Helen Lloyd Breed). Adding now to Nora's burden is her severely depressed mother's attempted suicide (obsessed with John F. Kennedy, she slits her wrists after he's assassinated) and subsequent institutionalization. Shuffled between her overwrought father and her emotionally distant Aunt Rose (Katharine Ross, suitably brittle and boozy), Nora ends up playing housewife herself as she awaits her mother's uncertain return home. Despite -- or because of -- its thoughtful, low-key feel and somewhat anti-climactic ending, Home Before Dark succeeds as a heartfelt coming-of-age drama. The film, Foley's first, won the Golden Starfish Award at last year's Hamptons International Film Festival. At the West Newton.

-- Jessica Cerretani