“In the Summers” is a wistful elegy to the passing of childhood and the recognition and acceptance of the flaws of those who made us.

Alexssandra Lacorazza’s downbeat debut feature follows two California sisters through the ups and downs of their relationship with their Puerto Rican-born New Mexican dad. She invites us to, like the sisters, judge and misjudge their father, and start to understand — by adulthood — the good and the bad in him, and speculate on what’s really going on and how he become who he is.

We size up Vicente (Grammy winning rapper Residente) on first sight — bald, neck and shoulder tattoos, a touch of stubble and taste for smokes. He may be welcoming ten year-old Violetta (Dreya Castillo) and even younger Eva (Luciana Elisa Quinonez) whom his ex has entrusted with him for the summer. But underneath the tenderness and doting dad moments we sense he’s a rough customer.

Living in a nice Las Cruces ranch house he inherited from his mother, he feeds them, lets the sisters swim in the pool and takes them on excursions to stargaze, learn about history and learn to play 8-ball at Carmen’s (Emma Ramos) bar.

The way Dad talks about science and math and explains things like how we have a rough idea of how many stars there are in the galaxy tip us off. Vicente was a smart kid who understands physics and higher math. As he drinks too many beers and teaches them the game “No Stopping” — which involves recklessly lurching through traffic in what might be an inherited Volv — we statt to see what went wrong.

Flashes of temper add to their and our understanding. The world might not have known what to do with a smart Hispanic kid when he was young. The sisters only figure out he’s tutoring local kids in science and higher math years later.

But on return visits, the siblings learn what to avoid around him and to decline his pleas to “trust me” about a lot of things — driving, remembering to pick them up at the airport, etc.

Lacorazza tells this lovely coming-of-age tale in long vignettes, breaking her story into chapters where Kimaya Thais and Allison Salinas, then Lio Mehiel and Sacha Calle take over the roles of Violetta and Eva as they mature into adulthood.

One sister will act-out, fight back, cut her hair short and figure out she’s gay. The other will feel almost abandoned, growing up troubled by what is plainly a less-than-safe environment of parties with short-tempered Dad’s “loser” friends “In the Summers.”

Lacorazza gets affecting performances that are by turns adoring, winsime and hesitant, defiant and confused and eventually simply resigned from the various well-cast young actresses. And in Residente, she finds machismo masking a bitter despair over how life turned out and the limited choices/poor decisions that put Vicente there.

She tells a familiar-seeming story in a new, beautifully crafted and touching way. Set in a little-filmed culture and corner of America, Lacorazza has created a debut feature that checks all the right boxes for what we hope to get from an “indie film.” “In the Summers” announces her as a talent to watch.

Rating: unrated, drug use, sex, drinking, smoking, profanity

Cast: Residente, Dreya Castillo, Luciana Elisa Quinonez,
Kimaya Thais, Allison Salinas, Lio Mehiel, Sacha Calle and Emma Ramos.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alessandra Lacorazza. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:34