A Walk on the Moon<> It's 1969, and the summer of love is heating up most everywhere except the Catskills, where tradition holds fast. On their way to their regular vacation in the resort area's Jewish bungalow community, the Kantrowitzes know what to expect. Mom and Dad pack up the station wagon with the usual clothes, dishes, and blankets. Their two kids take turns tormenting each other, more out of habit than willfulness. While driving, Dad sweats mildly, his eye focused on the clock. Grandma complains about the "hippies'' they pass hitch-hiking by the roadside. But Mom takes a second look at them, yearning for the youth and rebellion they represent. The camera becomes her gaze, taking in their long hair, beads, and bell-bottoms, even as they fade from view. She doesn't know it yet, but for Pearl Kantrowitz (Diane Lane), this vacation will be different from what she expects. The first sign that times are changing comes in the form of daughter Alison (the exquisite Anna Paquin), who has some fresh ideas about what to wear to the resort casino. Appearing in a skimpy midriff blouse that reads "69'' and short shorts, she takes her father Marty (Liev Schrieber) by surprise. "Change your clothes,'' he harrumphs. Pearl sympathizes with Alison, but agrees with her husband: there are certain lines to toe. Alison looks at her feet and pouts, then gets by him a few minutes later, wearing a bikini top that is literally obedient. She's young, after all, ready to take on the world. And the world around her looks plenty ready to be renounced. Almost as soon as they arrive at the resort, the loudspeaker announces -- in that standard jangly PA voice (here, Julie Kavner's) -- that "the ice cream man is on the premises.'' Mothers rifle through their purses. Kids spill out of cabins with hot coins in their hands. Preteens are assigned to "athletics'' teams with names like the Tadpoles and the Salamanders. And soon everyone is off to the lake, to splash about in plastic boats, sit under umbrellas, gossip, drink iced tea, and talk about their lives back home. As always, Pearl, Alison, Danny (Bobby Boriello), and tut-tutting and tea-leaf-reading mother-in-law Lilian (Tovah Feldshuh) do the vacation thing while devoted TV repairman Marty commutes every week to work back home. He's seemingly complacent, even oppressively so, but it's clear that he's also bored out of his mind, as he keeps precise track of the minutes it takes him to make the drive each time. This is not a place or time usually romanticized in the movies, which may be why Tony Goldwyn's A Walk on the Moon<> works so hard to include a full spectrum of socio-political movements, from the titular triumph of technology on the moon (and on television) to the rockfest just down the road from the Catskills at Yasgur's Farm. The script, by Pamela Gray (whose next project is Wes Craven's 50 Violins<>, starring Meryl Streep as a music teacher doing good works in Harlem), occasionally overloads on Historical Symbols. At its best, however, the movie gets at this ambitious agenda less directly. Marty and Pearl are grappling with shifting desires amid static lives, trying to keep a grip on what they think they know. They aren't so much unhappy as vaguely troubled by the idea that their future looks exactly like the present, though neither can voice it to the other. The closest they come is Pearl's frustrated assertion that the most important decision she's made in a decade has been "whether to shop at A&P or Waldbaums.'' To which he smiles, a little sadly (he's run out of options too), not quite soothing her, "You're making too much of this.'' As the man in the house, he's got to maintain control. Pearl's restlessness surfaces first in her interactions with Alison. Together they form a continuum between regret and resistance: little does Alison know that her mother wishes for her an escape from the life they know, a different fate than her own (married at seventeen because she got pregnant in the back of Marty's car). And Pearl doesn't realize that Alison is less strong than she is angry at her parents' overprotective edicts or even astounded at own turbulent emotions. Lane brings to Pearl a sadness and complexity that you might not have imagined, given her previous performances (though I confess an inexplicable affection for her Olympic-sharp-shooter-turned-secret-service-agent in Murder at 1600<>). Her Pearl isn't hopeless, just worn down, surprised to be thrilled when someone besides her husband notices her breasts. She's wondering about the life she hasn't had, the journeys she might have taken, the people she might have met. One of these possibilities is incarnated at the lake, in the form of the Blouse Man, whose arrival "on the premises'' is announced shortly (and conveniently) just after Marty leaves for his work week. The unsubtly named Walker Jerome (Viggo Mortensen, reminiscent of young, circa-Right Stuff<> Sam Shepard). (Apparently, one working title for the film was "The Blouse Man.'') Walker's a dreamer and a wanderer, seeming to embody all Pearl's lost hopes. He likes her, she's flattered. He gives her a ride home one day when she's caught in the rain. He looks her over. Her nipples show through her bra and flimsy blouse. Sexual tensions arise. She ditches the group tv-watch on the night of the moonwalk to alleviate these tensions. Lilian is the first to catch on, anxious to protect her son's marriage and the conventions and values that make sense to her. Pearl starts to look a lot like Alison, wearing halter tops and jeans, stealing out to be with their boyfriends under cover of night. Can devastating confrontations be far behind when both mother and daughter sneak off to Woodstock? The coincidence of one spotting the other at this massive three-day mud-extravaganza is a little too incredible, but the thematic point is made, resoundingly: even in the midst of all her desires and needs, Mom has certain obligations (also emphasized by another contrived crisis involving son Danny). And her confrontation with Alison, while both are huddled and teary in the bathroom, ends up being one of the film's finest moments. And this is true for the film generally. For all its framing of domestic dilemmas by seismic historical milestones, A Walk on the Moon<> is most effective when focused on those small scale eruptions. Even Marty has a little emotional calamity, alone in his son's room, back home after a blow-out with his wife. Sure, rock and roll and technology changed everything. But the big events are too easy to reduce to shorthand. Lives are made of details and the film gets many of these right.