Perhaps the most telling detail of Carmen and Lola, a competent, detailed portrait of adolescent awakening in the giant closet of a Spanish gitanos (Romani) community, is how Lola (Zaira Morales) and Carmen (Rosy Rodriguez) talk to each other.

Which is to say, they don’t, really. They inch closer to each other. Lola is certain she can only love women, Carmen’s in denial, but when they meet, bond over shared cigarettes, and finally kiss, they’re still stuck expressing in code. The director, Arantxa Echevarría, has spoken publicly about her commitment to this project, despite some questioning her position: she isn’t from this culture, which brings up the old concern about appropriation. But what sticks around isn’t insensitivity, but caution: this is a film that wants to wash away shame and repression, and so flinches away from knots of desire and any kind of vacillation between home and away.