Cast away

VERY GOOD GIRLS (B) - This sweet, low-key film about two teen girls about to head off to college plays like a very good Lifetime movie and a decent directorial debut.

Lilly (Dakota Fanning) and Gerri (Elizabeth Olsen) are close pals who vow to lose their virginity (and, thus, their goody-two-shoes personae) before heading off to school (Lilly's going to Yale). What could have been one long cliche instead gains depth and feeling from the impressive lead performances. Fanning's face is a mask that often tries to hide her frustrations. Olsen (who burst on the scene with "Martha Marcy May Marlene") has personality to burn, multiple talents (she has a lovely singing voice) and those big expressive green eyes. Her skills help smooth over the fact that she's five years older than Fanning, who still has the physique to pull off a teen-girl role.

This is a heartfelt celebration of sisterhood, but, of course, the conflict must revolve around a boy who comes between them. The same old type of boy. Here it's sensitive artist David, played by Boyd Holbrook, yet another bland hunk, this one in the Ryan Gosling mold instead of the Channing Tatum mold.

Naomi Foner, who wrote "Running on Empty" in the late 1980s and the more recent "Bee Season," gets behind the camera for the first time, with mixed results. She shows a connection with Fanning and those mysterious eyes. (Foner finds compelling ways to frame the girls in various situations.) Otherwise, the camerawork is unremarkable. She plays with shadows in an interesting way, and she has a natural feeling for the street life of New York. She lets the cast dance and play at times (the characters also like to strip in public), suggesting the waning days of childhood.

Foner's own script, however, falls short. The dialogue is too often clunky. The  parents are oddly drawn, barely sketched, and Lilly's domestic scenes with her mother and sisters, can be painful to watch. The quartet of parents also are mostly miscast. Richard Dreyfuss and Demi Moore both look uncomfortable as Gerri's liberal parents. Our man Clark Gregg makes the most of his bland scenes, while Ellen Barkin, as his fellow-psychiatrist wife, barks out the tritest lines. (And with her plastic surgery and severe dieting, she's barely recognizable from the old "Diner" days.) Their marital strife in front of Lilly and her sisters (including "Mad Men's" Kiernan Shipka, with nothing to do) is weak and unbelievable. Peter Sarsgaard finds just the right tone as a pervy yet relatively harmless older co-worker of Lilly's at a tour-boat service.

The narrative does zip along. One of the girls seduces David. A parent dies. A rift develops between our heroines. Will these girls turn out to be good in the end? Will their friendship survive?

If you're a woman, especially a young one, you probably will be more rewarded by your 90-minute investment here. Others will find it hard not to be charmed.

BONUS TRACKS
From the fulcrum midway through the movie, "Lost in the Light" from Bahamas (Canadian singer-songwriter Afie Jurvanen):



And Jenny Lewis, who does the heavy lifting on the soundtrack, here with Rilo Kiley and "Go Ahead" (Elizabeth  Olsen also does a fine acoustic version early in the film):