Sundance favorite "Garden State" begins as a standard portrait of youthful alienation and moves toward some rich notes of self-awareness. Actor Zach Braff’s first writing and directing effort is a remarkably assured film that grows deeper and more satisfying as it goes, and is one of the more memorable recent coming-of-age films with young adults who step up to what’s important in their lives, peering directly into the face of what it all means.

When struggling LA actor and absentee son Andrew Largemen (Braff) returns home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral, he’s in a disaffected funk. His hometown friends are content to dig graves and do drugs. His therapist father is on another planet and the two are at an impasse. Andrew feels nothing, and poker-faced Braff doesn’t let us in either. It’s clear he’s got issues—a dysfunctional family, mood drugs and severe "lightning storms" in his head.

In the opening scenes, Braff takes a big risk by acting deliberately disconnected from everything—including us. We don’t know what he wants or who he is. Thirty minutes into the film and just when we’re about to write off his passivity, Natalie Portman enters the picture, and in one of her best performances, gives the story—and Andrew—direction.

As Sam, the compulsively lying epileptic who slowly brings Andrew back to life, Portman creates a complex character that might be a distant cousin to Kate Winslet’s exasperating Clementine in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." She knows her limitations and accepts them, and Braff has written some terrific scenes between them that are, by turns, low-key, poignant and silly-sweet, including Sam’s goofy definition of originality, an unexpectedly moving pet burial scene and a clothed bathtub confessional late in the film.

When Andrew begins to bloom, so does Braff, who has an affable and winning nature, a warm smile and who knows that all great actors are good listeners. Like Portman, he doesn’t show off, instead focusing on the subtleties of reacting and often speaking minimally, in a soft voice.

In a storytelling masterstroke, Braff lets Andrew and Sam evolve slowly, taking his time to gradually reveal them until everything makes emotional sense. And the great indie actor Peter Sarsgaard, as Andrew’s dead end, grave-digging former friend, turns in another confidently cynical work that, like most of "Garden State," is surprising and endearing on its own terms.

There are fine supporting cameos from Jackie Hoffman, Method Man, Jean Smart, Denis O’ Hare and Ron Liebman, and an effective turn by Ian Holm as Andrew’s concerned therapist father. That so many talents jumped on board is a testament to its story integrity and Braff’s ability to write so much color into his ensemble.

"Garden State," with its lovely widescreen compositions, leisurely pace and heart on its sleeve romance, is not quite a perfect film, overreaching in its final scene as if to deliver a satisfying tie-up. Braff goes for the big emotions here and falls slightly short, but his work with Portman in the scene is nevertheless memorable.

Recommended.