Reel Affirmations: The Nation's LGBT Film Festival 2008

A recent American indie film gem, the wholly original and subtly humorous HALF-LIFE focuses on a Northern California community struggling to adapt as global chaos looms. Cynical 19-year-old Pam is fixated on her best friend - cute nerd Scott, a gay Korean adoptee who can't resist throwing his sexuality in the faces of his fundamentalist parents. Pam's brother Timothy keenly observes his surroundings, and with some special powers, might be able to alter everybody's reality.

Maintaining a largely child's-eye perspective on the sexual, religious and ethnic rifts stirred up in a California suburb, this emotionally potent film evinces the sort of imagination that, Phang argues, is necessary for human survival in the world as we know it.

Filled with gorgeously animated flights of animation, which are the drawings of 8-year-old Timothy (winning newcomer Alexander Agate); they offer the boy a respite from the difficulties of life with his mother, Saura (Julia Nickson), and older sister, Pam (Sanoe Lake), in California's Diablo Valley.

Abandoned by her husband, Saura has since taken up with Wendell, a much younger hunk with a misleadingly friendly demeanor. Saura treats Wendell as her refuge while growing increasingly sullen and temperamental with her children, particularly Pam, a glum teen who suffers from a lack of direction.

Along similar lines, Pam's friend Scott falls for black schoolteacher Jonah, much to the dismay of his parents.

An Asian "American Beauty" set against a backdrop of global decay and illuminated by splashes of "Waking Life" - style animation. Nickson and Lake are both prickly, sympathetic and entirely convincing as a mother and daughter whose relationship stiffens and thaws through multiple complex stages. Variety