There’s something wonderful at work in Junebug, the delightful tale of an upscale art dealer courting an eccentric artist and the complex family of her new husband. In a masterstroke of storytelling, writer Angus MacLachlan and first time director Phil Robinson mount an unpretentious family get-together around the polar perceptions of liberal and conservative America. Yet instead of fireworks, there’s acceptance—and the messy threads of real life. That’s saying something, and so is this powerful and funny little picture.

When Chicago art dealer Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz) gets wind of a hilariously slack-jawed southern painter who just might be brilliant, she treks down to North Carolina, contract in hand and new husband George (Alessandro Nivola) in tow. As luck would have it, his family lives close-by. Why not kill two birds with one stone and get into the good graces of the in-laws?

Matriarch Peg (the great Celia Weston) runs a tight ship with a suspicious eye. Younger brother Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie) has a brutal inferiority complex, while his excitable wife Ashley (Amy Adams), very pregnant and garrulous to a fault, comes on strong as Madeleine’s wacky, endearing new best friend. Father Eugene (Scott Wilson) tinkers around woodworking in silence. Madeleine observes each, more in an attempt to discover what makes her own husband tick than to size them all up. They’re cautiously impressed by her worldly sophistication. She falls in love with them anyway.

A movie of low-key observances, Junebug is perceptive about how fathers and grown sons can spend quality time in a garage without much speech, how resentment builds between siblings who "got out" versus those who didn’t, how a seemingly happy husband and wife barely know each other, and how when push comes to shove and priorities are tested, good intentions get muddy. It’s also insightful about how our life partners can surprise us in unexpected ways. In a beautiful scene at a VFW dinner, Madeleine is first shocked, then moved by George’s a cappella rendition of a hymn, a talent and disposition she hadn’t ever considered.

Her embrace is much like Junebug itself, which takes pause to recognize community socials, deep religious devotion and the simple pleasures of a leisurely wave from a kind-hearted neighbor. With its not quite culture-shocked, metropolitan liberal and its traditional, God-fearing southern conservatives, the film miraculously courts both perspectives—an honest, Blue-state look at a Red-State way of life.

But Junebug is anything but didactic or political—it’s more a story of Madeleine’s completed education of her own marriage and ability to look with clear eyes at a world not her own. What Junebug says so beautifully is that there’s a way to meet in the middle; that politics get trumped by humanity. Consider how the artist’s sister, who attempts to play hardball with a New York gallery and is suspicious of Madeleine from the get-go, reacts toward her when a family tragedy strikes.

And then there’s what director Robinson does with the house itself, which becomes a quietly fascinating character. He takes effective pause to explore, late at night and in empty moments, the shapes of the rooms, the stillness, the feeling of being up late in a country house, nothing but the country outside, and how soothing that can be. The shots, though they are simply of a house’s nooks and crannies, are transcendent.

Special mention is merited by the energetic Adams, acting with verve and pathos, who creates a character initially in your face, then later in your heart. When we first meet Ashley, she’s so immediately forward that she’s the type of person from whom you’d impulsively recoil. But then Adams infuses her with such genuine sweetness—goodness, even—that she melts your defenses and heart. It’s an original performance and it steals the film.

Davidtz, in her best work since Schindler’s List, shines brightly in a rare lead role, a ball of warmth and kindness, watching, listening and thinking. Her patience is graceful as she attempts to help Johnny decode the humor of Huckleberry Finn via Cliff’s Notes.

And veteran unsung character actress Weston gets a meaty role that could have been a one-note joke but in her hands becomes something headstrong and poignant.