Wow! How can one even begin to describe or rate this movie? It's like watching a train wreck but you just can't look away.

Both Ross Partridge and Oona Laurence are terrific in their starring roles here. Partridge also directed and wrote the screenplay, based on the novel by Bonnie Nadzam. Partridge portrays the very strange 47-year- old David Lamb, who's in the throes of a divorce, his father has just passed away, and he's been asked by his boss to take some time off to get himself together. Also, he's in the midst of an office romance with a woman (Jess Weixler),who seems to care very much for him, but he's only capable of wanting a sexual dalliance at this point. David is also a rather vile manipulator and prevaricator, which he uses to gets what he wants.

Laurence is simply amazing as the 11-year-old Tommie, who spends most of her time on the streets with her so-called friends, and who comes from a most neglectful and miserable home life. After watching her performance in this film, I can't see how Laurence cannot have the brightest future on the silver screen.

Thus, when David and Tommie cross paths in a strip mall parking lot, it will mark the beginning of a most creepy and bizarre "bonding' between the two that will culminate in David taking Tommie on a several day's trip to his late father's isolated cabin.

Although Tommie will get to experience things she never has before, she's manipulated every step of the way by David. Through his subtle promptings, he will convince her not to notify her mother where she's gone. Although there are no overt sexual advances on his part, David ends up placing Tommie in emotional situations no 11-year-old should be. Things will just get creepier and more bizarre as the movie progresses, but as mentioned, I was just totally engrossed, as painful as it was to witness.

Overall, this was a most unsettling film, to say the least, with terrific performances from Partridge and Laurence, and with its most gut wrenching ending its impact will stay with me for some time to come.

The camera did a good job, the pace of the story is fine, the actors did well (thumb up to Oona Laurence),the soundtrack is nice, yet just a 4!? I simply couldn't connect to the story. I never got what the story is really about and many of the male leads dialogue was just felling to me like they are copied from a esoteric life-coaching book or some kind of poetry from the bargain bin. Also the intentional motivation for Lamb to take the kid on a trip wasn't convincing to me. You are in a midlife-crisis and then you "kidnap" a young kid!? Seriously!? Maybe I'm not romantic enough for that kind of movie. Anyway, you may give Lamb a try, there is certainly far more bad stuff around you can waste your time on.

David(Ross Partridge) is a forty seven year old man who has just lost his father and divorced his wife and seems on the verge of a nervous break down. After burying his father, he meets an eleven year old girl, Tommie(Oona Laurence) at a parking lot, where, somehow, they connect. Thus begins a strange journey, where the two relate on an emotional level. David takes Tommie on a road trip to a desolate cabin in the mountains while searching for some meaning to his life. Tommie is an outcast with indifferent parents. The writer of the novel, Lamb, Bonnie Nadzam, claims to never have read Lolita, which was also adapted for the screen in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick. The themes are similar, but Lolita's protagonist, played by the precocious and self assured fifteen year old Sue Lyon, is a million miles apart from the innocent eleven year old Oona Laurence. Though at times unsettling, Lamb never veers into Lolita's explicitly sexual territory. Partridge and Laurence are riveting together and I look forward to see what the young actress does next. Lamb is a solid 8/10.