The potato harvest of Maine—in this depiction, at least—digs up blue and purple spuds. We see these colorful tubers in the most interesting scenes of the preciously titled Beneath the Harvest Sky, scenes that focus on how a crop comes out of the land and what old rituals attend the annual process; the harvest carries not only expectations of work and commerce but also transitory romance, which will neatly serve this coming-of-age tale. The movie doesn’t want to be conventional about any of that, and it tries hard to shirk the Hollywood cocktail of teen angst mixed with love. Despite the effort, the results here are oddly business-as-usual.
The key romance is not between boy and girl but between hetero buds. These friends play out the classical form of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty from On the Road: the calm observer type who can’t quit palling around with his irresponsible life-force chum.