Bill quits his teaching job and the house that he shared with his late wife and starts over thanks to the help of Paul (Kevin Dunn), an old college buddy now running a private school for spoiled rich kids in the big city. St. Martin’s is where the grieving father tries to start over and eventually earns the interest of the available wide-eyed French teacher, Carine (Julie Delpy).

This is also where Wes (Josh Wiggins), his son, who can’t afford to grieve thanks to his dad’s state of mind, has to find new friends and his place in the jock-centric food chain. Again, it’s the French teacher who intervenes, putting her advanced newcomer in charge of getting the brooding, failing Lacy fluent in French and prepped for her looming exams. Lacy, played by Odeya Rush, is another winning formula for the film; the twenty-something-year-old, better known as Hannah in Goosebumps, has the looks of Mila Kunis but the versatile acting chops of the underrated Christina Ricci.

Rush’s sub-plot opens up a whole separate set of issues, cutting as an attempt to interrupt strong emotions and pressures that seem impossible to tolerate. The self-injuring sub-plot is another distressing story progression within the already mournful set-up – Bill trying to keep his shaky psyche together and Wes trying to figure out how to deal with his crumbling world and still retain an air of normality for school while playing parent. Adding the disturbed, rich Princess of Darkness into the mix does bring an all-new level of intolerable cruelty to the piece.