Apart from the script, it’s the actors who make this a film worth seeing; all of them look and sometimes even act like real people rather than types or icons.

Cast of newcomers is appealing, but this small-town melodrama is so old-fashioned and out-of-touch with contemporary youth that it feels as if it were made the same time that its story is set, in 1957.

Would be a lot more fun were it a trashy Troy Donahue-Diane McBain vehicle ground out by Warner Bros. in 1960.

With a cast that is far too beautiful for real life, this period-piece romance would seem to be some sort of fantasy straight from the pages of, say, Mirabella magazine... [But] this ends up being a small, patiently paced and touching story.