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"Wanna smoke some pot?"

You Can Count on Me is really the essense of the "arthouse" movie: it doesn't have a hook. There's nothing in the plot description or the cast list that would make any reasonable person want to run out and see it. Its success, therefore, depends fully on word-of-mouth, and that is where this little American movie has come through in spades. From the time of its debut in Sundance to its nationwide release almost 10 months later, positive buzz has been spreading like wildfire. Now, the film's considered a dark horse in the Oscar race and, even with extremely high expectations, it does not disappoint.

Ken Lonergan's directorial debut begins on a tragic note: a car crash that kills a married couple, leaving their two children -- Sammy and her younger brother Terry -- orphaned. Cut to present day. Sammy (Laura Linney) is all grown up, a single mother with a young boy named Rudy (Rory Culkin) and a solid job at a local bank branch. Her new boss (Matthew Broderick) is a jerk who refuses to let her leave work to pick up her son from the bus stop and take him to the babysitter.

Terry (Mark Ruffalo) and Sammy have all but lost touch over the years. Terry's life is still directionless; he wonders from place to place doing odd jobs with no clear idea where he is heading. Suddenly, he calls Sammy and tells her that he's coming to visit. Not knowing what to think, she meets him at a local diner and quickly deduces that he has come for money and is only to planning to stay a few days at most.

The story takes a few twists and turns after that, and while You Can Count on Me is hardly plot-based, I don't feel like revealing them all the same. The interesting part about the film isn't how the discord between Terry and Sammy came about -- it's implied, but we're spared the lurid details -- but rather in how these two markedly different people go about salvaging an important relationship that's never quite worked out the way they would have liked. Both try their best to make amends without compromising their respective lifestyles, which puts them on an eventual crash course that doesn't culminate in the way we expect.

Laura Linney, excellent in supporting roles such as Truman's wife and the prosecutor in Primal Fear, has to carry this movie and her performance is amazing; her character is assertive, sometimes aggressive but always subtle. There's no black and white in this movie, no right or wrong, no clearly defined definitions of "good" and "bad." The movie's too smart for that; it knows that real people and relationships aren't that simple. Linney's performance reflects the complexities of Lonergan's screenplay.

Less showy but just as impressive is Mark Ruffalo, who is also in one of the first starring roles of his career. As the perpetual slacker Terry, we get the impression that Ruffalo is playing himself which means that either a) he's playing himself or b) he transformed into the role so completely, he gave the impression of playing himself. Either way, he deserves a piece of the Oscar buzz pie that Laura Linney is getting.

You Can Count on Me is an understated gem, a mature movie that actually requires an attention span to watch. It's graced with great performances, strikingly true dialogue and avoidance of just about every cliche films like these usually suffer from. Like Shakespeare in Love two years ago, I would not be surprised if this little critical darling would up conquering the Oscars in Y2K.