Lymelife is a coming-of-age story set on suburban Long Island at the end of the 1970s.

A radio broadcast at the beginning sets the scene: Everyone in the neighbourhood is worried sick about Lyme disease, the potentially disabling illness spread by deer ticks.

The story is told from the point of view of Scott (Rory Culkin), a skinny high school student with a crush on his neighbour Adrianna (Emma Roberts).

Scott is being bullied at school, a situation his older brother (Kieran Culkin) hopes to solve by going over to the bully's house and thrashing him.

Big brother is just about to ship out to service in the Falkland Islands, and there are some unspoken family-related issues there.

Mom and dad, played by Jill Hennessy and Alec Baldwin, have their own set of problems, but they're hoping to keep those problems from the kids.

Meanwhile, the local Lyme disease fears are intense enough that Scott's mother obsessively duct-tapes his trousers shut at the ankles. And it's so bad that Adrianna's father didn't go on his annual hunting trip; we meet her father, Charlie (Tim Hutton), waving his hunting rifle around, never a good sign. Turns out Charlie is suffering the effects of Lyme disease, with maybe a bit of depression thrown in there. And lots of drugs. He isn't working, and he's not a happy camper. His disappointed wife, played by Cynthia Nixon, works for Alec Baldwin's character.

There are shifting loyalties among the two married couples; you can do that math.

Lymelife is set just before the Reagan era began in the United States, and the tension in the families reflects the larger political and social change afoot.

Alec Baldwin's character, for example, is a developer, and he's building big, fancy subdivision houses in the neighbourhood. He's built one for his own family, but his wife, played by Jill Hennessy, doesn't like it -- it's too big, too sterile, too removed from the closeness she remembers from their old house in Queens.

Dad promises his sons that the buildings will make them all millionaires within a year. Thanks to dad, there's a general shift in the moral tone at Scott's house, and he and his brother don't like it.

Lymelife has an implausible ending, but the story is told through such vivid characters (and through such terrific performances) that you can almost forgive the overwrought finale.

There are a couple of false notes -- some unlikely conversations about The Catcher in the Rye and some of Emma Roberts' dialogue, for example -- but all the actors are intense and believable, and Baldwin is ferociously good.

And from the music to the clothes and the household furnishings, every detail contributes to capturing not merely the look, but the mood of the times.

Lymelife is small and uneven, but it works. The metaphor of the deer ticks, of something that will make you sick (mostly with fear) lurking in the midst of that seemingly perfect pastoral setting, is played for drama and for darkly comic laughs.

When it first played at the Toronto International Film Festival, Lymelife won the Fipresci Prize, which is an international film critics' award.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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