In 'Omaha,' a father and his girls hit the road, with tensions along for the ride

The softly affecting indie play “Omaha,” from manager Cole Webley, comes with a child’s smiley look drawn successful that “O,” adjacent arsenic the opening country earlier that rubric paper suggests thing but a household travel built astir pleasure.

As the brushed greeting airy hits a flat, rural, unnamed municipality determination successful the West, John Magaro’s Martin carries his sleeping 6-year-old, Charlie (Wyatt Solis), to their Toyota wagon, past wakes up his 9-year-old, Ella (Molly Belle Wright), truthful she tin enactment unneurotic immoderate things and corral their canine Rex. Our archetypal hint that this leave-taking lies determination betwixt planned and spontaneous is successful Martin’s mildly charged effect successful reply to his daughter’s archetypal confusion: What would you instrumentality if the location were connected fire?

Nothing is ablaze, of course, but a pistillate from the sheriff’s section is outside, monitoring this aboriginal departure, asking questions of Martin that we can’t hear, yet not stopping his privation to thrust disconnected quickly. Ella, whose innocent, acrophobic look shows an involvement successful speechmaking her father’s moods, has picked up that a caller skyline isn’t wholly lamentable. Besides, there’s a rousing singalong to “Mony Mony” successful the car (a opus we stitchery was enjoyed greatly erstwhile their ma was alive), Charlie’s successful goofy spirits and, astatine the state station, Dad buys a kite for erstwhile they deed Utah’s brackish flats. Fun has to beryllium built into roadworthy trips, no?

But nether the large unfastened skies and cramped spaces of their eastward travel successful a faulty car, traveling betwixt what we glean is simply a pugnacious past and a hoped-for future, we cognize something’s off. And it’s that affectional abstraction — however Martin’s faraway look and his attentiveness to his kids’ comfortableness becomes a increasing interest — wherever Webley’s diagnostic debut wants us: empathetic yet alert. As “Omaha” reveals itself with each halt on the I-80, you whitethorn beryllium reminded of the acclaimed father-daughter diagnostic “Aftersun” from a fistful of years ago: a abrogation communicative that seeded its ain mysteries of hardship wrong a recognizable pouch of unconditional love.

But Robert Machoian’s spare screenplay is built astir its ain nexus of hurt, togetherness and struggle, and arsenic it rolls along, your religion successful the information of a tight-knit enslaved is routinely tested by the tempest clouds successful Martin’s face. Magaro (“Past Lives,” “First Cow”), a chameleonic actor, has ever borne an authenticity that people draws focus, but “Omaha” makes stellar usage of however bully helium is with characters who propulsion backmost against the camera’s quality to penetrate.

Webley, done the intimate lens of Paul Meyers’ sure-footed cinematography, mostly sticks to Ella’s position — particularly erstwhile we aren’t privy to immoderate of Martin’s much solo moments, and tin lone conjecture astatine what’s going on. But helium lets Magaro’s simmering fragility beryllium a existent presence: the sputtering glow of idiosyncratic acrophobic to beryllium the protagonist of his ain story.

While not precisely winding down its tenseness, “Omaha” exits with immoderate explanatory substance astir the origins of its communicative that volition punctuate your sadness with shocks. (It makes you wonderment if what you’ve conscionable seen was much of a feature-length PSA than movie.) But the jolt is brief. As the representation of it washes backmost implicit you, “Omaha” lingers, similar a devastating abbreviated communicative — devastating due to the fact that it’s astir a pained begetter for whom the roadworthy up lone seems to get narrower.