Plot

A coming of age story set in the south of the U.S. when Elvis was King.

Rural Louisiana, summer of 1957, Elvis is King. At 14, Dani is coming of age. Her older sister is beautiful, smart, and off to Duke in the fall; her mom's pregnant with number four (Dad wants a son), and Dad's pretty strict. Life gets sweeter when 17-year-old Court Foster, his widowed mom, and two little brothers move into the vacant farm next door. Court likes Dani's high spirits and direct way, and though he has a man's responsibilities on the farm, they go off swimming sometimes. The waters of adolescence are deeper than Dani realizes as hers and Court's feelings get jumbled. Then Mother Nature throws wrenching surprises at Dani, and she must come to terms with new emotions.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

It's 1957 in rural Louisiana. The Trants are a loving family. Fourteen year old tomboy Dani Trant is the middle of three siblings. She is at the age where she has few responsibilities - although her father, Matthew Trant, believes it's time she did more around the house, especially as Dani's mother, Abby Trant, is pregnant again - and loves more than anything to go swimming in the pond in the empty neighboring Foster property, the Fosters who moved away fifteen years ago. She looks up to her sister, Maureen Trant, who she sees as the perfect, beautiful sibling, although Maureen, who will soon be heading off to college, readily admits that she has her doubts in life. As an example, she tells Dani that she may be dating Billy Sanders, but she is not going with him. When the now fatherless Fosters move back, Dani's life changes. Although their first few encounters are antagonistic, Dani eventually falls in love with the oldest Foster son, seventeen year old Court Foster, who now acts as the male head of the household following his father's death. Although there is some sexual tension between himself and Dani, he sees her more as a special friend. Regardless, Dani, who wants more than anything for Court to be the person who provides her with her first kiss, may get her wish. Their relationship may forever change when Court and Maureen eventually meet, they who are immediately attracted to each other. Both Court and Maureen are aware of Dani's feelings for him, so they have to decide what to do about their own romantic wants for each other.—Huggo

In its elegiac nostalgia for the days of childhood innocence, Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon recalls another of Mulligan's earlier films, To Kill A Mockingbird. Set in a Louisiana backwater town in the 1950s, the film chronicles the coming-of-age of a young teenage girl. Dani (Reese Witherspoon) is a fourteen-year-old girl who shares a room with her seventeen-year-old sister Maureen (Emily Warfield). During hot summer nights, they sleep on the screened-in back porch of their home, talking about romance, the future, and the meaning of life. Moving into the house next door is a handsome seventeen-year-old boy, Court Foster (Jason London). Court meets Dani at the local swimming hole and they are immediately attracted to each other; through Court, Dani experiences her first true and perfect love. But when Court meets Maureen, the sparks really fly and Maureen falls in love with him too. Now Maureen is torn between holding back her love for Court or accepting his love and betraying her sister. A tragic event makes Maureen's mind up for her.

In the Louisiana countryside Danielle 'Dani' Trant grows up the spoiled second child of three, at 14 still practically free of chores, leaving her lazy time to go skinny-dipping in the waterhole. There, swimming in the buff, she meets her neighbor, boy Court Foster, diving in his boxers, at 17 already the fatherless head of a taxing farm household with two kid brothers, mature beyond his years, who wisely resists her shameless attempts to kiss and probably more. Yet she imagines their innocent friendship to herald much more, until Ma's late-term hospitalization brings older sister Maureen, a Duke student, back home. Maureen naturally appeals more to Court's courting instincts. Dani will sadly have to deal with her jealousy after fate strikes a cruel blow at the boy both sisters desire.—KGF Vissers