In the world of the young adult novel, adolescence can be troubled, even treacherous, but never quite depraved. With The Sky Is Everywhere, Josephine Decker (Madeline’s Madeline, Shirley)—a filmmaker well acquainted with the dark, twisted, and outré—has refashioned her expressive theatrical style to expand the gentle, heartbreaking territory of the ache-y teen movie.

In the film, which premiered Friday on Apple TV+, Grace Kaufman plays Northern California high schooler Lennie, a reserved yet gifted clarinetist who struggles to reckon with the loss of her older sister Bailey (Havana Rose Liu). Bailey was the assertive, charismatic, beautiful, and brave one; the manic pixie dream girl whose tragedy befell her on stage while rehearsing Romeo and Juliet. She dies suddenly, and Lennie is left to grief alongside her grandmother Fiona (Cherry Jones), Uncle Big (Jason Segel), and Bailey’s boyfriend Toby (Pico Alexander). Their bright, beautiful woodsy world understandably falls into a spiral of depression.

In the book on which the film is based, Bailey and Lennie are born to a mother who left them when they were very young; Lennie more or less accepts her mother’s abandonment because she has Bailey as a stand in. Bailey however, had other ideas before her death. But in the film, the absent-mother narrative is replaced with another layer of irreversible tragedy: Long ago, Mom died from a heart arrhythmia, same as Bailey.

It’s interesting to think about why Jandy Nelson, who wrote both the novel and the screenplay, would shift the circumstances of her own creation. The elision more fully centers the love triangle that emerges between Lennie, Toby, and a dreamy guitarist from Lennie’s school, Joe Fontaine (Jacques Colimon). With Mom and Bailey reunited somewhere, there’s even more room for Lennie to be confronted with the frightening unknown of an independent life.

Lennie and Toby scandalously find themselves smooching in fits of despair. They are, of course, trauma bonding: able to connect more intensely through their shared sadness. But Lennie and Joe, who’s never shy about his interest in the clarinetist, have their music. And even within her space of torment, Decker infuses the Lennie’s life with enthusiasm and play, dexterously moving the camera through the cottage where Lennie lives with Grandma and Uncle Big; placing comedic sounds cues in awkward moments; turning the roses that fill the property into extensions of costumed human arms in a scene where Lennie and Joe share a near-orgasmic experience listening to Bach. Even if you’re not a teen hanging onto every beat of the tricky romantic and psychological dynamics unfolding on screen, the film thrills with its ostentatious visual and aural style.

Narratively, there’s little about The Sky Is Everywhere that will surprise those familiar with the YA genre. Lennie—in the midst of her grief—makes some confusing and bad choices while making some wise and good ones. In the end, romantic love propels her forward even if it can never fill the hole her sister leaves. That Decker is able to transmit a deep and compelling curiosity about this journey through each and every image is reason enough to follow a deeply familiar and sometimes overearnest plot. Hopefully, the film’s wide subject matter appeal will make the director’s talents evermore present on our screens.

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