Critics reviews

The kids pull you along, partly because, as filmmakers like Gus Van Sant know, there is something irresistible and transfixing about young bodies in motion. The influence of Mr. Van Sant's more experimental films — their framing, elliptical storytelling and tenderness — on "Pavilion" is as apparent as the ubiquitous sway of Terrence Malick.

This lyrical drama, which finds its aesthetic somewhere between the long takes of Gus Van Sant's Elephant(2003) and the intimate, home-movie feel in much of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011), captures adolescence at its most wistful.

The awkward and inarticulate emotions of growing up are lent quixotic vivacity courtesy of the film's ravishing unspoken rhythms, elegant long takes, and Sam Prekoo's infrequent, affecting score.

Sutton is invading Gus Van Sant and Matthew Porterfield territory here, but his eye for the wide shot and his confidence in the meditative pacing are all his own. (Cinematographer Chris Dapkins is someone to watch.) It's a film that hinges on our openness to the simplest moments: A smiling mom watches her son and a girl swim in a lake at sunset; a boy's long hair whips in the wind while driving.