Friends Grow Up, Apart in Adroit ‘Sleepover’

The Grande 4-Plex continues its American Independent Film Series with John Sullivan’s “Sleepover,” a remarkably detached and mature evocation of coming of age set against a harrowing incident inspired by an event Sullivan actually experienced.

Sullivan shows us nothing we haven’t seen before, but that thought never occurs to you as you’re watching his exceptionally adroit, unfussy film set in an attractive Connecticut town at the end of summer.

“Sleepover” is as American as apple pie, but it has the unpretentious, throwaway sophistication of a French film. Its half-rural waterside setting is one of those places in which young people are experiencing the transition to adulthood with too much time on their hands, which is the perfect atmosphere in which a bully may flourish--until those he dominates start outgrowing him.

Saddled with totally obtuse and uninterested parents, Michael Albanese’s Mark is a good-looking auburn-haired youth who knows how to turn on the charm but most of the time is throwing punches and pushing people around as he expresses the rage that has him in its constant grip. He’s a truly deplorable, brutal control freak, but he has enough charisma to make it comprehensible that Karl Giant’s Sean, a likable, perfectly normal kid, would let Mark dominate him--just as it’s understandable why Heather Casey’s poised, patrician Brooke would be turned on by him, even when she knows better.

A meandering, restless summer culminates when Sean; Brooke; her 14-year-old younger sister Anne (Shannon Berry); her pretty, sensitive friend Megan (Megan Shand), to whom Sean is attracted; and Sean’s friend Ken (Ken Miles)--the one African American in the neighborhood--are persuaded to pile into a car with Mark. A supposedly innocent outing turns into a nightmare as Mark is forced to realize he’s losing his grip on his pals.

“Sleepover” is a first film for most everyone involved, but cast and crew alike impress, especially Albanese, who shows us the pitiable kid beneath Mark’s macho posturing. “Sleepover” is a most accomplished debut film for NYU film school graduate Sullivan.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has some sex, considerable blunt language and some violence.

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‘Sleepover’

Michael Albanese: Mark

Karl Giant: Sean

Shannon Berry: Anne

Heather Casey: Brooke

Ken Miles: Ken

Megan Shand: Megan

An Artistic License Films release. Writer-director John Sullivan. Producer-editor Jim McNally. Cinematographer Joaquin Baca-Asay. Music Elliott Goldkind. Production designer Roshelle Berliner. Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Grande 4-Plex, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown Los Angeles, (213) 617-0268.