In many ways, writer-director Jing Yi’s graceful and ephemeral drama, The Botanist (Zhi Wu Xue Jia), plays out like your typical coming-of-age movie. It’s about a lonely kid, raised by his grandmother in a small town, who falls in love with a neighboring girl. As folks begin to move away to the big city, the kid may find soon himself left behind.

What sets Jing’s feature debut apart from many other specimens of the genre is its unique location, as well as an obsession with nature that’s underscored by its title. Set in a stunning faraway valley in northern China that lies on the border with Kazakhstan, The Botanist depicts an isolated community where some of the locals speak Kazakh instead of Mandarin, and where life goes on as if modern technology never existed.

It’s an intriguing backdrop to a film that can be too...