Director Cam Archer offers an impressive debut with this lush, extravagant first feature conjuring the desperate intensity and mysticism of first love and sexual awakening.

Others in school tend to write off 13-year-old Jor­dan. No one takes the time to understand him as he understands himself: a wild and beautiful animal, out of place in civilized society. Even Jordan's closest friend, Joey, uses him mainly as a sounding board to rehearse the poses and phrases of male sexual prowess, as yet unrealized. Jordan shares Joey's curiosity about the sex­ual exploits of older boys — particularly his dreamboat fellow student, Rodeo — but longs to enter this world through a different door. When Rodeo himself shows Jor­dan a modicum of kindness, the very air seems heavy with a brotherly love that might blossom into something more. Jordan can't find a way to express his feelings to Rodeo until a mysterious voice arises from within him, calling itself "Leah" and manifesting the power that Jor­dan has suppressed for so long.

Archer renders the beauty and feral intensity of this unique story with fine direction of an astonishing cast. Exquisite handling of sound, color and visual tex­ture, as well as a haunting soundtrack, evoke the other­ worldliness of infatuation and transcendence. Also starring Fairuza Balk, Kim Dickens, and Tom Gilroy as a few of the adult figures in Jordan's world, this bold and bewitching film heralds the arrival of a precise and uncompromising observer of the queer imagination.