British-born art dealer Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) goes into the North Carolina countryside to woo a renowned local painter for her upscale Chicago gallery. She and her younger husband George (Allesandro Nivola) decide to extend the trip to include a visit to his family who live near by. Father Eugene (Scott Wilson) is queerly quiet, mother Peg (Celia Weston) prickly distrustful and younger brother Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie) is a brooding, smoking, grumbling mess trying to stay outside of his older brother’s far-reaching shadow. Only Ashley (Amy Adams), Johnny’s talkative and perkily pregnant wife, embraces Madeleine, immediately latching onto her as the big sister and role model she’s always hoped for.

Madeleine knows she’s an outsider, her husband’s family – especially his mother – plainly skeptical of both her and her big-city-ways. The thing is, George isn’t helping, not by a long shot. He’s off all alone, spending time by himself and refusing to let Madeleine know either what is going on or what it is he’s thinking. None of this matters a lick to Ashley. She adores her new sister-in-law, and innocent mom-to-be isn’t a bit timid about making sure everyone everywhere knows it. But when labor proves to have major complications everyone’s personal agendas and priorities crash head-on into the realization that Ashley and her baby might not survive the night.

Music video director Phil Morrison’s debut feature “Junebug” is the type of movie you almost need to see twice to fully appreciate. It’s obvious from the get-go that the performances, especially the stellar work of Adams, is exceptional; it’s the movie itself that leaves a strange aftertaste. No one really changes all that much by the time the credits roll. Nobody fully gives up on their beliefs and accepts the others for who they are. Nothing changes, and I, for one, am perfectly okay with that.

This is a picture about people from different worlds looking only to get along, not change their opinions. It is a red-state-versus-blue-state quagmire, each family member learning to accept the other for who they are without ever grasping the ideals each for one reason or another seems to take for granted. “Junebug” is all about the shades of grey, the subtle differences between mother and daughter, father and son, brother and sister, which make life so head-scratching and bewildering.

It is also a coming out party for the splendiferously talented Adams. She’s magnificent, the actress delivering a rapid-fire performance so electrically invigorating it literally gave me Goosebumps. She’s a blabbering dynamo of feminine disassociation, reaching so hard for a brass ring colored with acceptance and female companionship she almost fails to notice her husband is quietly falling apart. It is a beautiful portrait, one of the best I’ve seen this year, and “Junebug” would be nothing more than a curiosity piece without her.

The rest of the actors are just fine. Davidtz gets her meatiest role since “Schindler’s List” and runs with it, while veteran character actors Wilson and Weston finally get full-bodied parts equal to their respective talents. “O.C.” hottie McKenzie is also quite good, but it really isn’t until the picture’s second half I really began to realize how complex and nuanced his portrayal of this forlorn southerner really was. Only the usually reliable Nivola disappoints, his turn as the emotionally closeted George relatively rote and uninspired.

Morrison directs confidently if unsurprisingly. While the movie is put together with expert grace, the fledgling filmmaker isn’t exactly inspired behind the camera. Sure, he and writer Angus MacLachlan aren’t afraid to take chances (those southern slavery portraits simply must be seen to be believed – their bad taste almost beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed) but that doesn’t mean they do anything technically creative. Visually, “Junebug” is amazingly static, cinematographer Peter Donahue’s camerawork and Joe Klotz’s editing journeyman solid if never all very interesting.

Not that this really matters. The meat and potatoes of the story is so good and Morrison’s work with actors so strong the fact the picture is only okay from a technical standpoint nothing to complain too much about in the end. This is a movie about real people with real issues dealing with real problems and handles them all with realistic decisiveness. By the time the credits role it is impossible not to be moved, if not by the journey George and Madeleine have just completed that at least by Adams’ marvelously emotional portrayal.

“Junebug” opens with some southern locals practicing an art form known as hollerin’. This musical cry was once a practical form of communicating in North Carolina, and watching these individuals practice it is strangely mesmerizing. I feel like hiring them, getting them to do my job for me. For if ever there was an oddly effecting indie worth hollerin’ about, it’s Amy Adams and her film “Junebug.”

Final Rating: êêê(out of 4)