David Gordon Green follows up his George Washington with something similar yet also somewhat better. Again the setting is a North Carolina mill town, the milieu mainly working-class, and the period contemporary only in the broadest sense. (Perhaps the surest sign of the present is the heroine’s telling the hero not to smoke in her bedroom.) But this time most of the characters are somewhat older, none is black, the cast includes veteran actors as well as talented first-timers, and the plot is more focused: an offbeat love story between a 22-year-old ladies’ man who’s never left town (cowriter Paul Schneider) and an 18-year-old virgin and recent boarding-school graduate (Zooey Deschanel). This is a lyrical heartbreaker that skirts most love-story cliches and is brave enough to be as inconclusive as the characters. Green’s poetic sensibility and Tim Orr’s lush ‘Scope cinematography give this drifting story a pungent aftertaste. 108 min. (JR)