Gary Carnivele

An attention-grabbing, potentially profile-elevating performance by up-and-comer Hunter Page-Lochard is the major selling point of “Around the Block,” an Aussie variation of the oft-spun scenario about an at-risk high-schooler who gets a shot at redemption through a transformative extracurricular activity. Christina Ricci claims top billing — and provides some modest marquee allure — as a transplanted American teacher determined to uplift her Sydney students by introducing them to Shakespeare. But Page-Lochard is the one more likely to earn the critical plaudits in this well-intended film.

Improbably engaged to the Down Under version of a good ol’ boy, U.S.-born Dino Chalmers (Ricci) immerses herself in what she assumes will be her happily-ever-after milieu by landing a job as English teacher in Redfern, a Sydney inner suburb, at an under-funded school on the brink of closure. It’s the sort of demanding gig that idealistic educators have been tackling in movies since the earliest flickerings of the silent era. And, true to form, Dino immediately evinces her can-do, infectiously ambitious spirit by talking the school’s borderline-burnout principal (Aussie screen icon Jack Thompson) into letting her stage a student production of “Hamlet.”

Liam Wood (Page-Lochard), a 16-year-old Aboriginal student from a hardscrabble housing project, surprises no one more than himself when he impulsively — and successfully — auditions for the lead role as the Prince of Denmark. At first, his atypical interest in a school event seems motivated entirely by his attraction to classmate and co-star Williemai (Madeleine Madden), a bright Aboriginal girl from a more upscale neighborhood. Gradually, however, first-time writer-director Sarah Spillane reveals that Liam has been inspired by the example of his Uncle Charlie, former member of a Sydney theater troupe.

Trouble is, Uncle Charlie recently met his untimely demise while collaborating with Jack (Matt Nable), Liam’s father, during a botched casino heist. Steve (Mark Coles Smith), Liam’s hot-headed, criminally inclined brother, is determined to punish the informer he holds responsible for Uncle Charlie’s death and his father’s current incarceration. And Steve fully expects Liam to assist in the violent retribution.

To her credit, Spillane doesn’t push too hard on the obvious parallels between Hamlet’s reluctance to kill his father’s murderer and Liam’s own hesitation to extract revenge. Rather, the filmmaker uses Liam’s crisis of conscience as the means to explore his deeply conflicted feelings of desire and dread, while Page-Lochard subtly and affectingly illuminates the often contradictory facets of the character. The young actor is especially effective in scenes with Ursula Yovich (who makes a memorable impact as Liam’s anxious mom), and in a key third-act interplay with Nable.

By sharp contrast, Ricci gamely struggles with clumps of hackneyed cheery-encouraging dialogue that inadvertently support another character’s dismissive suggestion that Dino is little more than a starry-eyed do-gooder who can’t help patronizing her Aboriginal students. Of course, Dino has problems of her own: Even before she distances herself from her casually racist fiance, she appears hopelessly lovesick for a beautiful shopkeeper (Andrea Demetriades) with whom she had a fling years earlier during a previous stay in Australia.

Dino’s slow-simmering sexual confusion comes to a boil, so to speak, during a rather startling scene in which the schoolteacher takes a walk on the wild side, picks up an androgynous tattooed cutie (Ruby Rose) in a lesbian bar, and proceeds to enjoy a hot and uninhibited one-night stand. Spillane’s matter-of-fact approach to presenting this steamy interlude doesn’t entirely mitigate its disruptive shock value.

Of course, the scene might have generated less of a WTF response had the overall narrative been more evenly divided between the two central characters. As it stands, however, Liam emerges so clearly as the central figure in this story that, after a certain point in the proceedings, anything not directly involving him seems like just so much distraction.

Veronika Jenet’s supple editing is a plus throughout, particularly during the climactic sequences. Other tech values are more than adequate to the task at hand.

“Around The Block” will be shown at Frameline 38 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival at the Castro Theater Tuesday, June 24 at 9:30 p.m.  For more informayion go to:  www.frameline.org.

Young Moroccan scribe Abdellah Taia moves into the director’s seat with the screen version of his autobiographical novel “Salvatio. ” The film delivers a straightforward, beautifully told story of a gay man negotiating family, desire and the sexual power play behind Arab-European intimacy. Thestrong pint-of-view narrative  allows access to the protaganist’s head, despite the character’s understandable distancing coldness.

While positive gay Arab protags are something of a cinematic novelty, “Salvation Army” isn’t the first to center around such a character, contrary to recent reports (Maher Sabry’s “All My Life” and Samer Daboul’s “Out Loud” are but two earlier examples). Taia’s largely autobiographical book, however, was a bold coming out, unadorned by guilt or sensationalism and directly confronting Western expectations, at least in gay circles, of Arab youth as adornments rather than equal companions. Transitioning his story to the screen, Taia retains the bare bones butsome of the warmth and insight is lost in the transition.

Young Abdellah (Said Mrini), 15, lives with his parents, five sisters and two brothers in a working-class district of Casablanca. His father has one bedroom, his older brother Slimane (Amine Ennaji) another, and the third is a burrow-like space where the warmth of his mother’s body, alongside his other siblings, provides a cocoon of reassuring intimacy. This protective physical ease contrasts with his parents’ volatile relationship, in which mutually desired sex is often a precursor to his father beating his mother (Malika El Hamaoui).

Cohabitation within this charged atmosphere is made more electric by Abdellah’s erotic longing for Slimane; meanwhile, the teen has his first sexual encounters with men. In the book Taia presents these episodes as rites of passage in which Abdellah connects to his sexuality; later, he also understands them as problematic manifestations of repression and the power dynamic imposed by older guys on younger ones. But in the film, the helmer-scripter removes any trace of gratification, shooting these scenes at a voyeuristic, emotionless distance.

Ten years later (inelegantly signaled), Abdellah (Karim Ait M’hand) is in a relationship with an older Swiss professor (Frederic Landenberg). The film’s best scene occurs at this juncture, when a prying rowboat owner showing the couple the sites near the coastal city of El Jadida tells Abdellah he’s lucky to have nabbed a rich guy. The implication of gay-for-pay is inescapable, and an uncomfortable Abdellah does nothing to dispel the interpretation, since doing it for money is acceptable whereas having same-sex emotional attachments would be “haram.”

Taia leaves unclear what Abdellah gets out of the affair, though he implies that the Swiss lover is a shortcut to obtaining a European student visa. The last section of the film takes place in Geneva, where the Salvation Army of the title temporarily provides friendly faces, meals and a roof over his head.

The detached and impassive atmosphere Taia maintains throughout, with long silent takes, is unquestionably a conscious choice, yet apart from breaking with the tone of his novel, the airlessness reflects Adellah’s hardening facade. The main actors, especially Mrini, are ciphers. A nice bit of first-person voiceover around 30 minutes in, allows us entry into Abdellah’s thoughtsand feelings. Taia places everyone against the most neutral backgrounds possible, further displaying the resonance of his characters.

Even the masterful talents of d.p. Agnes Godard add to the film’s sober, but yearning tone: A scene of the young Abdellah and his sister stomping laundry in tubs has a Proustian poetry about it. An erotic and revealing mud-bath scene appears plays with contrasting textures of mud and skin and delivers as a sensory delight.

“Salvation Army” will be shown at Frameline 38 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival at the Victoria Theatre June 20 at 9:30 p.m. and at the Roxie Theatre June 27 at 7 p.m.  For more information go to:  www.frameline.org.