Sylvia (Rebekah Johnson) and Ben (Ben Foster) listen to records.

by Catherine Marquis-Homeyer
staff editor

When you're a kid, you assume every family is like yours.

"Liberty Heights" is a lovely, warm tale about growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore during the mid-1950s. Directed by Barry Levinson, it tells the story of two brothers, one in college and one in high school, who begin to explore the world beyond their immediate neighborhood of Liberty Heights.

When he was small, the younger boy Ben (Ben Foster) tells us, he assumed all the world was Jewish like his family, as everyone in his neighborhood was. When he visits a school friend for lunch where he's served unfamiliar foods, his mother tells him that his friend must be "the other kind," which is Ben's first hint that not everyone is like him. Now in high school and college, both of the boys begin to explore the larger world outside their neighborhood. The older boy (Adrien Brody) befriends an affluent WASP classmate, and develops a crush on a classic blonde beauty he meets at a party. The younger boy befriends a young African-American woman in his newly integrated high school, who introduces him to African-American music and disrupts many of his assumptions about his new friend's background. In parallel and overlapping stories of the brothers and their friends, the director draws a marvelous and warm coming-of-age story of both, as well as an appealing portrait of the time and place.

The gentleness and sweetness of this story, as well as the matter-of-fact breaking of stereotypes, is the movie's greatest appeal. The plot of the film is very well done and alternately follows each brother, and returns to a unifying tale of the whole family. The story of the brothers is blended with a tale about their father's business. The father runs a fading burlesque house that is a cover-up for an illegal numbers-running business. The father, however, is an honorable man who conceals from his sons the true nature of his business. No explanation is given for how the father arrived at this profession, but this is the time shortly after the demise of vaudeville when former vaudevillians turned to burlesque to make a living.

The blended stories involve drama and humor in a well-crafted character-centered tale that entertains and makes you think. The acting is well done, and the direction is subtle and superb. The photography gently points the viewer to the right view of the action and the characters, without actually drawing attention to itself. I didn't see this film before the end of the year and so it didn't appear on my list of ten best of the year, but it probably should have.