Directing and writing duo Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s latest is a patient, earnest, and moving character study in the vein of their previous outing, the small-town, local-theater-set tearjerker Ghostlight. Set in 2002 North Little Rock, Arkansas, and based on an incident in O’Sullivan’s own life as a teenager, Mouse follows Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) during her junior and senior years of high school. After her best friend, Callie (Chloe Coleman), dies in a car accident, Minnie forges a bond with Callie’s grieving mother, Helen (Sophie Okonedo).

The film clearly outlines the differences between the two teens. With curly hair and a vibrant spirit, Callie was the school’s star theater kid. In contrast, Minnie excels academically but is a shy, perpetual wallflower, especially around Callie’s sullen friends, Brandi (Addisyn Cain) and Cara (Audrey Grace Marshall), who treat Minnie with cold indifference. “I always kind of forget you exist,” one of them tells her.

As preparations begin for a school musical revue tribute to Callie, Minnie begins to show some potential to come out of her shell and perform through musical lessons with Helen—a former classical musician who cut her career short to marry and raise Callie—and under the guidance of theater instructor Mr. Murdaugh (a perfectly cast David Hyde Pierce), whose sexuality is the subject of Brandi and Cara’s speculation.

Unlike Helen, whose mother is a touch posh and worldly and makes lavish meals, Minnie’s mother, Barbara (Tara Mallen), works all day in a veterinary clinic and heats up Lean Cuisine and frozen nuggets for Minnie and her foster baby brother. Minnie also has a thankless job at a strip-mall indoor playground, which includes cleaning all the disgusting things in the ball pit. Barbara tries her best to connect with Minnie, but Minnie is embarrassed by her mother and their working-class existence. This is reminiscent of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, whose influence on this film is somewhat apparent. Minnie instead begins connecting with Helen, staying at her house, and becoming a daughter-like presence in Callie’s absence.

Through Minnie’s constant re-renting of the DVD of Good Will Hunting, a film she and Callie loved, she meets and soon befriends Kat (Iman Vellani), a friendly teen clerk at the rental store who is dealing with the recent loss of her mother. In the store, as an in-joke, one might glimpse posters for O’Sullivan and Thompson’s earlier efforts, including the title Saint Frances superimposed over the poster image of the very 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies. As Minnie and Kat begin to develop feelings for each other, Minnie continues to mature and come into her own.

Like her turn in this year’s Clarissa, Okonedo delivers another steely, layered performance, often relaying emotion through her eyes, without dialogue. Kupferer, who played the precocious teen daughter in Ghostlight, is completely believable. It’s a consistent performance: She often looks down and away, as if Minnie is never quite comfortable with herself. The one sequence when she suddenly seems completely uninhibited is, sadly, when she is drinking booze at a post-homecoming party. Mallen, who also played Kupferer’s mother in Ghostlight, is again an authentic figure, a familiar blue-collar mother with a hard shell on the outside but a soft center inside, just trying to get by and searching for ways to emotionally connect.

In a highlight scene in her living room, Helen plays an audio recording of her recent visit with a psychic for Callie’s friends. The psychic claims to be in contact with Callie but seems to be fishing for names. On the recording, Helen feeds him the name Minnie, to which he asks if Callie ever called her Minnie Mouse. While listening, Helen looks over at Minnie, searching her face pleadingly for confirmation that Callie called her that. Minnie nods her head, probably lying. It’s a quietly devastating moment between the two characters and wonderfully calibrated between the two actresses.

Overall, the film evokes the feel of 2002 without being too on-the-nose or obvious. The original score by Hamilton Leithauser, frontman of the indie band the Walkmen, lends a winsomeness to the film’s blend of comedy and drama. The soundtrack’s array of songs, many of them now-cringeworthy pop tunes of the era, are perfectly chosen, including a darkly funny moment when Shaggy’s “Angel” plays at Callie’s funeral. I never expected to tear up at the drivel of Lee Ann Womack’s overplayed early-aughts country ballad “I Hope You Dance,” but here, I did.

With the school’s cabaret revue on the horizon, the film feels pitched to have a stirring climax similar to the one in Ghostlight, where a construction worker playing an unlikely Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet moves himself and his family to tears. Yet Mouse takes a different track, including an emotional confrontation between the two mothers, perhaps a little bit of a knowing nod to The Turning Point. While it lacks Ghostlight’s ultimate power and isn’t quite as witty and heartbreaking as Saint Frances—a loose, unsung gem unfortunately released in 2020 during the pandemic—O’Sullivan and Thompson’s collaboration is nevertheless a sensitive tale of grief and an indelible coming-of-age story, featuring excellent lead performances as well as Mallen’s supporting turn.