Moss

Writer/director Daniel Peddle brings a languorous mood to his coming-of-age drama, set on the island fringes of North Carolina. Even the title, which shares its name with the central character, evokes something ancient, natural and slow moving.

It's Moss's 18th birthday but we quickly learn this has long been a mixed blessing marking as it does, the anniversary of the death of his mother in childbirth. This particular morning brings a sharply hurtful argument with his driftwood artist father (Billy Ray Suggs), the two men's feelings of guilt and loss raging in all the wrong directions.

What unfolds next, is an odyssey of sorts, which though the miles travelled across the island are few, brings a world of experience to Moss. This is not a film in which a great deal happens in the way of drama, but rather one in which encounters bring personal revelation. Although ostensibly on a mission to take pills to his grandmother (Sue Philomen), Moss is easily diverted, first by a visit to see his friend Blaze (Dorian Cobb) - another name that calls natural forces to mind - and then a chance encounter with older woman Mary (Christine Marzano) he finds camping by the beach.

It will come as little surprise that after a chat with Blaze including the bemoaning of his virginity that this encounter with Mary has the potential to lead to something - one of the few script elements that feels too on the nose - but Peddle shows admirable restraint allowing a gentle chemistry to build between the two as they smoke weed and she initiates him to shrooms. Instead of diving into some sort of experimental psychedelic trip, Peddle and his cinematographer (Juri Beythien, from whom, more please), instead allow the camerawork to become even more loose-limbed, the colour scheme more saturated, as Moss sees the world around him from a slightly shifted, rather than fully altered, perspective.

We come and go from his experience, as though in a haze ourselves, slipping into vignettes involving his father and Blaze going about their own routines, before returning to the heat of moment with Moss. While the film occasionally threatens to drift off completely on a bike ride with Blaze or down river on a canoe, Peddle keeps his themes grounded, particularly his melancholic meditation on the impact losing a parent - to death or jail - can have on those left behind. By foregrounding nature, from the waters of the river Moss paddles up and down to the tree canopy he frequently gazes up at, Peddle also anchors the film in its sense of place, a constant reminder that to every thing there is a season and a natural sweep that, for better or worse, takes little notice of human emotions. Mitchell Slaggert is also a natural in the role, capturing both the frustrations and anger of Moss but also a winning naivety that feels right for the character's age and lack of life experience.

The more dreamy the film gets, the better it is, the characters' conflicted feelings carried along by wistful scoring from Ian Hatton. Its more concrete and deliberately signposted elements, such as a periodic voice-over from Moss and the use of a carved ship gift, feel cumbersome in comparison. Events also arrive with an unseemly haste towards the end of the film - a slower come down would have suited the mood more - but even if the story flirts with cliche, the emotions ring true.

Moss is currently available on VoD in the US on Amazon, iTunes and Google Play