The feature debut from director Michael Cuesta is an odd and intriguing hybrid. Its story line—a gruff pedophile pursues an aimless Long Island youth whom he first encounters during an abortive housebreaking, and said pedophile subsequently forms a genuinely paternal concern for the kid—seems the sort of thing that a director might attack with a gritty, realist approach. But Cuesta, whose background is in commercials, takes a surprisingly phantasmagorical route, creating often dreamlike visuals; in one scene, the action is interrupted by a sudden sun shower, a beautiful evocation of the special magic summer one has during adolescence. And while its scenario seems to promise diciness of the Larry Clark variety, L.I.E. is, in fact, a thoughtful, compassionate portrait of characters trapped in appalling interior circumstances. Brian Cox gives a particularly brave and acute performance as the pedophile, and he's fully matched by Paul Franklin Dano's turn as Howie, the growing-up-absurd teen. Some of the movie's devices (the voice-over, for instance) are a little pat, but overall, L.I.E. gets somewhere few films ever even aspire to go.