Swamy Rotolo, second from right, in A Chiara (Neon)

A birthday party is a terrible place for anyone to find out a family secret, and perhaps most of all for a teenage girl. The titular Chiara suspects her father has something to hide as her older sister’s celebration rolls on with dancing and toasts. Her handsome babbo seems edgy, holding back from the festivities. Like Chiara, we’ll watch as he flees the scene outside of the party and a car soon explodes, a fitting metaphor for a comfortable living being blown to smithereens. Jonas Carpignano’s film deals with dark issues and the dilemmas they pose, but with a wavering fly-on-the-wall detachment that lets us feel their power only unevenly.

Chiara (Swamy Rotolo) has been leading a decent, rather mindless teenage existence in lower middle-class Calabria, hanging out with her pals and playing around with her phone. Her dad’s sudden disappearance leads to all kinds of unpleasant discoveries, from a hidden compartment in the house to the sickening realization that her mother and older sister know far more than she does and are stubbornly denying anything’s wrong. Chiara’s acting out against their lies and evasions will lead to her forced separation from the family and a quest to find the truth.

Naturalistic and reflective of grim social conditions, A Chiara recalls two recent European films spotlighting young girls with their backs to the wall. Wildland got up close to a teenager ensnared by an outwardly loving crime family. Happening, a story of a young woman’s coping with an unplanned pregnancy, conveyed the sense of entrapment and fear when a sudden predicament throws up unspoken barriers between loved ones. Both of these movies hit harder than A Chiara, partly because the performances at their centers are stronger. The camera sticks straight-on to lead actress Rotolo’s oval face, often tense but blank and revealing little; the currently modishly gamble of casting nonprofessional actors in leading roles may have delivered an expressive shortfall here. In a similar vein, trendily long, loose takes remove the edge from potentially charged scenes.

A few barbed touches give some edge to A Chiara, which, although not absolutely compelling, is atmospheric and never uninteresting. Calabrian life, as depicted here, moves in step with corruption that can be either purposefully pursued or casually accepted, but is always expected. A walk through a Roma Gypsy community sets off a warning spark in Chiara’s mind—and ours. A scene where a teenager eludes authority by folding herself into a pack of fellow teens rings totally true, and an encounter with a figure on a foggy morning evokes the Weird Sisters scare from Macbeth, fateful and vibrating with betrayal. This is the third film Carpignano has made about a matter-of-factly tragic part of modern-day Italy, and moments like these make us anticipate another one, this time with the material’s dramatic potential shaped with a stronger hand.