My Old Ass is a diamond in the rough, anchored brilliantly with performances from Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, and Percy Hynes White, under writer-director Megan Park’s steady hands.

Sure, the paradoxical mechanics are sometimes questionable, but Elliott LaBrant’s (Maisy Stella) journey at this point in her life is beautifully rendered. Park’s intended empathetic pull only intensifies as Elliott experiences her world.

On the cusp of getting ready to transition to life on her own at college in Toronto, her circle of acquaintances, Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks) is full of questionable and unquestionable complexities. Elliott is as freewheeling as she wants to be, playing pranks on Ro and Ruthie. On the other side, Elliott distances herself from her family, making the indifference between peers and blood seem natural.

Park plays into Stella’s strengths as an adolescent actress and Stella plays into Elliott with glee. The performance makes the entire experience that much more enjoyable when Aubrey Plaza enters the fray as the Older Elliott. Again, the mechanics aren’t important. Leaning into the film’s themes, taking the relationships for what they are is what matters.

Stella and Plaza are dynamite together. The difference in age, experience, and wisdom engenders enough empathy from their uniqueness to play into the dramatic and comedic undercurrents.

Park’s story uses the confluences of experience and wisdom to drive Elliott to the one thing she should avoid at all costs: Chad (Percy Hynes White), a stunningly good-looking hired hand on the family farm for the summer. The unfolding chemistry between Elliott and Chad is naturally coy. Stella and White play off of each other as well as Stella and Plaza do; Stella has the screen chemistry to draw you into her circle of influence and keep you there, specifically where Park wants the audience.

The balance between the intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics Elliott experiences is equally important to My Old Ass’s journey, as the family drama unfolds. Elliott despises her younger brothers, Max (Seth Isaac Johnson) and Spencer (Carter Trozzolo), and is disconnected from her mother (Maria Dizzia). Park’s suggestion that we trust our intuitions has such a profound impact on Elliott that she cannot avoid addressing the yin without the yang.

Visually, Park is as much about the environment Elliott lives in. The brightly-lit daytime sequences shot at Muskoka Lakes in Ontario, Canada by DP Kristen Correll conveys the assured calmness and serenity that Elliott feels and contrasts with the nighttime sequences in which Modern Elliott and Older Elliott encounter each other. Interestingly, nearly all of Elliott’s and Chad’s encounters happen in daylight as do all of her encounters with her family. As influencers in her life, Elliott’s experiences with Ro and Ruthie are spread between daytime and nighttime shots. Park’s visual style is nearly subliminal in what it has to say that you nearly miss it.

My Old Ass succeeds on Maisy Stella’s and Aubrey Plaza’s performances and it excels as a diamond in the rough from Megan Park’s steady direction and strong story.