Jess + Moss

In actor-turned-director Clay Jeter's Jess + Moss, two unlikely friends spend a final summer together in rural Kentucky. Eighteen-year-old Jess (Sarah Hagan) and 12-year-old Moss (Austin Vickers) are second cousins. Years before, Moss's mother and father died in an automobile accident and Jess's mother split the scene sometime afterward. Now, their home lives are empty: Jess lives with her estranged father, and Moss stays with his ghostly grandparents. As the long, hot summer unfurls, the pair swim, bike past tobacco fields, and watch fireworks, but mostly they hang out in a dilapidated old house where Jess listens to cassettes her mother left behind (Moss prefers self-help tapes). Jess + Moss is a languid, purposefully repetitive, and thoroughly self-contained character study (only a few other characters appear, albeit briefly). The duo strike poses against rusty trains and broken-down buildings, while voiceover narration stands in for conventional dialogue. With its emphasis on atmosphere over story, Jess + Moss is a slice of arty Southern Gothic in the vein of Terrence Malick and his disciples David Gordon Green and Harmony Korine. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)