There shouldn’t be such a strong sense of ennui for a sixth grader as Callie (Lexi Perkel) feels in the opening moments of “Mabel,” but director Nicolas Ma and writer Joy Goodwin conjure an array of mixed feelings as she plans to relocate some flora from the woods behind her old home to take up residence in her new one. Tucking the potted plant into the backseat of her parents car, it becomes clear that she believes she has better rapport with it than the people upfront when the Mimosa Pudica can curl its leave in response to her touch and they seemingly can bond over the feeling of being uprooted.
Unconventional connections give the lighthearted coming-of-age drama plenty of life when an interest in botany is both a blessing and a curse for Callie, whose passion for plants can make it seem as if she isn’t bothered too much by the lack of attention paid to her by her dad David (Quincy Dunn-Baker) and mom Angela (Christine Ko), largely preoccupied with setting up their home in the suburbs to accommodate the former’s new job as well as her relatively new sister, yet it comes at the expense of getting her to engage with much else. She finds a role model for better or worse at her new middle school when disappointment in the science class for kids her own age leads her into the classroom of Mrs. G (a wonderfully prickly Judy Greer), a dyed-in-the-wool lab rat for whom substitute teaching is clearly a way station to getting back on a more sustainable track for her research and when Callie starts illicitly auditing the 8th grade biology course, the two both seem to be in the right place when neither are where they should be.
That Callie or Mrs. G are both too single-minded and headstrong to show any overt affection for one another becomes part of the “Mabel”’s charm and its first-time director Ma is as careful in his reach as Callie is to extend her hand to the titular plant, gently navigating a sophisticated story where compassion is on display at all times for characters who can often be seen caring about the wrong things. While Angela can be seen favoring her younger daughter over Callie only because it looks like her eldest is wise beyond her years, Callie’s own predilection with plants prevents her from seeing the possibility of a real friendship with her next door neighbor Agnes (Lena Josephine Marano).
The three are played perfectly by Ko, Perkel and Marano, whose collective fumbling around for ways to be a part of one another’s lives becomes a strong backbone for the film. Beyond their rich performances, there’s a depth of feeling in Mark Jeevaratnam’s delicately observational camerawork punctuated by vivid colorful flourishes and a lovely score from Tom Kingston where the strings can convey a sense of longing or nimble thought as characters face the unknown in approaching each other, and when the kind of growth Ma charts isn’t always visible to a camera, “Mabel” really blossoms when reflecting how becoming your own person isn’t necessarily something that has to be done alone.
“Mabel” does not yet have U.S. distribution.