Once in a great while, an actor moves through a film with so much confidence and bravado it's a thrill to watch his imagination and command unfold from scene to scene. Seasoned actors can do this, with a lifetime of understanding the intricacies of the camera, the beats that shape a scene, the communication with other actors, the intuitive way of knowing how to get exactly what their director is looking for.

But you usually don't expect to see it come so vibrantly alive in a 17 year-old actor with virtually no previous acting experience, at the heart of a low-budget film without much fanfare. There's a star turn on display in the beautiful new film Raising Victor Vargas, and it's carried off with humor and heart by an unknown actor who, simply by virtue of being an extension of himself in an extension of his own world, achieves some uncommon acting grace notes.

There's no point in beating around the proverbial bush when it comes to singing the praises of this decidedly little film. Raising Victor Vargas, the story of a self-styled teen Casanova coming to grips with family, first love and maturity, is the best film of 2003, and possibly of last year as well.

Set on Manhattan's Lower East Side, this is a teen film that is the real deal - a story of youthful awakening so alive, so energetic and so well-written and acted it seems like some sort of minor movie miracle. Lyrically shot by ace cinematographer Tim Orr, who created the poetic worlds of David Gordon Green's George Washington and All the Real Girls, here is a film with a rich, gorgeously gritty setting - Manhattan's Lower East Side in the middle of a long, hot summer. And it's a world populated by spunky, likable characters, with a good heart and fine sense of the detail in its portrait of teens, love and family.

The charismatic Rasuk is Victor Vargas, a would-be urban Romeo who haunts his neighborhood as a playboy of almost epic proportions - in his own mind, at least. When we first meet him, he's enmeshed in a very funny seduction of upstairs neighbor Fat Donna (Donna Maldonado), and we immediately think we're in for a raucous teen sex comedy, the story of a slick urban lothario on the make and out to bed whomever enters his radar screen.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Raising Victor Vargas, as written and directed with a sensitive and assured hand by Peter Sollett, turns out to be a winning story of growing up and finding one's place through a fumbling first love and the families ties that bind.

Sollett's perfect film focuses on teen Victor and his family - old-world, traditional grandmother (Altagracia Guzman), younger sister Vicki (Krystal Rodriguez) and younger brother Nino (Silvestre Rasuk, Victor's real-life brother). With parents absent, they're all each other's got. When Grandma feels that Victor's would-be worldly ways threaten to corrupt his siblings, family priorities and tensions mount.

Victor and buddy Harold (Kevin Rivera) spend the hot summer days at the local pool looking to pick up girls, without much luck but not for lack of much flamboyant posing and prancing. Enter "Juicy" Judy (Judy Marte), a stunner who's not fooled by all Victor's bluster and hot air, and her best friend Melanie (Melanie Diaz). Judy's too smart to be swindled by Victor's transparent pick-up routine, but keeps him around out of convenience to ward off the neighborhood thugs who pretty much fall at her feet, so to speak, every time she sets foot outside.

Along the way, there's a teasing relationship between Harold and Melanie, and they court each other in a push-pull dynamic that reveals a genuine delicacy and a great knowledge of teenage flirting. Diaz, in particular, is effective in these scenes and though initially made up to be a lower-key wallflower next to the stunning Marte, reveals a beauty all her own as she flowers under Harold's attention.

Add to the mix Judy's younger brother Carlos (Wilfree Vasquez), pining for Victor's sister Vicki, and brother Nino's own inquisitive adolescent discoveries, and you've got as winning a romantic roundelay as any in recent memory. A palpable sense of love is in the crowded, sweaty city streets, and the film makes you feel it drip in all its youthful zeal.

But beyond the budding romance and tenderhearted stirrings of first love, there's also a terrific family story going on here, with Victor and guardian Grandma navigating a complex relationship - she sees his apparent promiscuity and lax morality as a family corrupting influence - that leads to a heartbreakingly funny scene where she attempts to unload him on a social services worker.

There are other family scenes here that are simply beautiful, one involving grandma, Nino and a bathtub, and others just revolving around the quiet of a dinner table or an impromptu piano piece. This is a film where expressions mean everything, and the generous cast works together to give each other moments of breathing space within scenes that is often quietly moving.

There's so much to say about the way Victor and Judy awkwardly stumble toward first love, and very little of it happens to be on the page (a high compliment to Sollett and company). If you watch the absolutely delicacy of their expressions, their faces are so open, so fresh, so full of real feeling, you could swear you've seen them actually fall in love onscreen by the film's climactic final reel.

I spoke with Sollett, Rasuk and Marte about their collaborative process and the apparent level of improvisation that was incorporated into the film, and they told me they essentially worked without the script once they had finished a month of rehearsing with it. The freshness and spontaneity is on the screen. You never, ever for a minute have a feeling these kids are "acting," and all of their work is free of any actorly tics or the usual sense of programmed teen delivery.

They're up there, moment to moment, sometimes breathing, sometimes looking into each other's eyes, sometimes touching each other's cheeks at the most delicate moments. Breathtaking. Both Marte and Rasuk have accomplished, firm control of their scenes together, with a natural chemistry that is impossible to manufacture. They've known each other for some time in real life, having attended the same high school together, and their ease together is intoxicating.

This film was originally a 29-minute short entitled Five Feet High and Rising, with the same cast, which won a prize at Cannes and led Sollett to develop it into a feature length film with a decidedly different focus. But the experience the three have shared throughout the two projects has translated into something magical on the screen. You absolutely get a sense of the connection between the actors and the director, guiding them beat to beat, moment to moment into an emotional realism that's undeniably affecting.

Now back to Victor Rasuk. Rasuk is a revelation in this film, and his charisma and subsequent emotional openness and ability to cut through the posing and open his heart is surprisingly moving. His performance might be one of the best teen performances on film, period. He's that good.

When I asked him about his level of confidence in the film, he talked about his concentration level and deferred to Sollett's directorial expertise. Well, maybe. But what he's got in this film is a star quality that is a baseline any good director can channel, which obviously happened here.

Not that this is a one-man show. Judy Marte is a worthy foil for Victor's raucous affections. Her canny blend of teenage sensuality and grown-up smarts is just about right, as she appropriately sidesteps each of Victor's would-be seductions on the way to something more meaningful and real. That she's beautiful hardly matters. She digs deep into the details of "Juicy" Judy, creating a picture of a young woman direct and honest, possibly smart beyond her circumstances, with standards and intelligence to match her more obvious physical gifts.

How refreshing it is to see a teen movie set in an urban milieu that avoids all of the sensational and tired clichés of movie teens today, from the disaffected cynicism of Igby Goes Down and Tadpole, to the gross-out hijinks of American Pie, to the contrived outrage and sensational push-buttons of anything by Larry Clark, a director off the deep end of reason.

Raising Victor Vargas, with its simple story of a young man finding his place with his family, with his first love and with himself, is a gem. It's a pure movie experience and a rich chronicle of a community of kids who choose to follow their hearts and in the process win ours.