Stop the Pounding Heart

Filmmaker Robert Minervini adopts the Italian neorealist style of the 1950s in this film about two youngsters growing up in an isolated Texas community, a place where fundamentalist religion is a dominant element, although learning to use firearms runs a close second. Sara Carlson and Colby Trichell are non-professional actors playing dramatized versions of themselves. She is one of 12 children in a family that supports itself by raising goats and selling milk, cheese, and yogurt at the regional farmers' market. Her parents home-school the siblings, teaching a literal interpretation of the Bible that emphasizes a woman's submission to male authority. Colby is a Christian too, but much less intense. He's determined to become a rodeo rider despite a lean, lanky physique that lacks the sheer strength required for staying on bulls. When Sara meets Colby, their awkward conversation and sidelong glances indicate some attraction, although the connection never progresses to what would be called a romance. It does, however, cause Sara to start questioning aspects of the belief system she's been brought up in. Shot with a handheld camera in natural light, Minervini's film is a minimalist slice of rural cultural life that refuses to veer into melodrama, giving it a potency that some will find revelatory. Recommended. (F. Swietek)