When this movie was over, I sat quietly for a moment so that I could feel the arc of its story being completed in my mind. They had done it: They had found a way all the way from the beginning to the end of this material, which is so fraught with peril, and never stepped wrong, not even at the end, when everything could have come tumbling down. “The Man in the Moon” is a wonderful movie, but it is more than that, it is a victory of tone and mood. It is like a poem.
The film takes place on a farm outside a small country town, in the 1950s. Two teenage girls are being raised by parents who are strict, but who are also loving and good. One of the girls, Dani, is 14 years old and has just passed uncertainly into young womanhood.
Her sister, Maureen, is about 17. On hot summer nights they sleep on the screened-in porch and have girl talks, and Dani laments that she will never be as beautiful and popular as her sister. Of course all kid sisters feel that way.
A widow moves onto the farm