ALARM bells should start clanging the minute poetry is read aloud in a movie.

But "Blue Car" overcomes this initial "uh-oh" moment ("I am the disease that rots the bark of the trees," the young protagonist intones solemnly) and settles into an unflinchingly honest coming-of-age portrait.

Possessing something of the dreaminess that suffused "The Virgin Suicides" and last year's "Swimming" with an inner glow, writer-director Karen Moncrieff's deliberately paced debut - a hit at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival - profits from top-notch performances across the board.

Chief among these is an outstandingly intuitive turn by newcomer Agnes Bruckner. The camera loves her expressive brown eyes and bow lips and, as the Lolita-like high schooler Meg, she hits just the right note of coltish sensuality.

Meg is a gifted young poetess seeking to fill the father-figure-size void left when her dad exited her life in the vehicle of the title.

At home, she tangles with her stressed-out mother, Diane (Margaret Colin), whose pursuit of a better job blinds her to the needs of her two daughters, and struggles to help Lily (sixth-grader Regan Arnold, a real find), her smart, fragile little sister who's on a downward spiral.

Meg's hunger for affection and affirmation makes her particularly vulnerable when her English teacher, Mr. Auster (indie veteran David Strathairn), shows an interest in her writing, encouraging her, over a series of increasingly intimate lunch-hour tutorials, to "go deeper."

Although he initially has conflicts about his growing attraction, Mr. Auster evolves into one of the more loathsome characters to besmirch a screen, and it's a testament to Moncrieff's skill as a director that this character evokes such a visceral revulsion.