Starring Marcia Gay Harden and Joe Pantoliano. Rated PG.

If you've had any firsthand experience with a family member going through a meltdown, you'll know that it doesn't look much like the dramatic explosions that happen in movies and TV. In his first feature, made in 2006, writer-director Joseph Greco—apparently basing the tale on his own childhood history—sets out to convey the everyday costs of mental illness.

The good-looking Canvas focuses mostly on the effects of a parent's illness on a 10-year-old son, Chris, played striking well by young Devon Gearhart (who since appeared in Changeling and Funny Games). Chris's dilemma is actually a grossly exaggerated version of all preadolescent fears. At that age, many of us imagine what would happen if Mom were to frantically drag us off a school bus or show up at a roller rink with a lopsided birthday cake just as some special girl is showing interest. But such things actually happen to this kid, who's forced to witness the steady mental decline of his once-doting mother, embodied by Marcia Gay Harden in a performance remarkably free of scenery-chewing mannerisms or Big Movie Moments.

If Harden impresses, and Gearhart provides an appropriately bewildered POV, the movie's true revelation is Joe Pantoliano—veteran psychopath and goofball character actor—who never strikes a phony note as Chris's dad, a skilled construction worker almost crushed by mounting family crises.

The dad's response, initially, is to build a big sailboat in the driveway, thus multiplying the title's references; Mom is also a part-time painter and Chris's future, of course, is as yet unpainted. As you might suspect, the movie is not entirely free of symbolic clichés, and the orchestral score threatens to oversell the emotions. But Canvas sets out to do very difficult things and does most of them so well you just want to hug the people next to you.