‘Suncoast’ a moving, indie-style drama about a teen dealing with family turmoil

We’re not even two minutes into writer-director Laura Chinn’s low-key and resonant drama “Suncoast” when we know the waterworks eventually will be coming — but it’s a well-earned heart-tugger of an ending, thanks to Chinn’s gift for authentic dialogue and her surehanded, no-frills, indie-style directing.

It’s just the right approach to material that tackles issues about the literal definition of life and how families cope with a horrific and heartbreaking situation that lingers for days, weeks, months. Years.

“Suncoast” is based on Chinn’s book “Acne: A Memoir,” which detailed her experiences growing up in Florida in the early 2000s. At the time her younger brother was in the same hospice as Terri Schiavo, whose case became a cause célèbre as Schiavo remained in a persistent vegetative state for years while her husband sought to have Terri taken off life support while her parents fought against it.

In this fictionalized version, Nico Parker delivers a beautifully layered and utterly real performance as Doris, a shy and sheltered teenager who has been all but forgotten by her angry and overbearing mother Kristine (Laura Linney, great as always), ever since Doris’ brother Max (Cree Kawa) was diagnosed with brain cancer that has spread through his body and has left him in an unresponsive neurological condition.

For years, while Kristine has worked endless hours to pay for her son’s care and for Doris’ education, Doris has had to spend nearly all her free time looking after her brother. Now the time has come for Max to be moved to Suncoast, the hospice care center that has become the epicenter of dueling protests and nonstop media attention surrounding the Schiavo case.

With Kristine almost always working or with Max, the painfully shy Doris seizes the chance to finally make some friends by having a party and inviting the cool kids, including a trio of rich girls (Daniella Taylor, Ella Anderson and Ariel Martin) — they sing “Don’t Cha” by The Pussycat Dolls while zipping around in a convertible — and a sweet guy named Nate (Amarr) who is obvious Crush Material. Suddenly, finally, Doris has a life, but it’s because Max is about to die.

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“Suncoast” deftly toggles between Doris’ coming-of-age adventures and her complicated feelings about what has happened to Max and how her mother has essentially rendered Doris virtually invisible for nearly a decade. Out of nowhere, Woody Harrelson enters as Paul, a hippie widower who has come to Florida to join the protests to keep Schiavo on life support. Paul takes a fatherly interest in Doris, and the script manages to make this relationship seem at least semi-plausible without creepy overtones. (Kristine is so consumed with her own grief and bitterness that she doesn’t even question why this man is friends with her daughter.)

With the cinematography by Bruce Francis Cole capturing the mid-2000s Florida setting and the score from Este Haim and Christopher Stracey helping to set the right mood, “Suncoast” eschews heavy-handed messaging about whether one is really and truly alive when one cannot survive on their own in favor of a quietly moving, occasionally surprising and ultimately lovely and thought-provoking work.