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

The quietly affecting indie drama “Omaha,” from director Cole Webley, comes with a child’s smiley face drawn in that “O,” even as the opening scene before that title card suggests anything but a family trip built around pleasure.

As the soft morning light hits a flat, rural, unnamed town somewhere in the West, John Magaro’s Martin carries his sleeping 6-year-old, Charlie (Wyatt Solis), to their Toyota wagon, then wakes up his 9-year-old, Ella (Molly Belle Wright), so she can put together some things and corral their dog Rex. Our first clue that this leave-taking lies somewhere between planned and spontaneous is in Martin’s gently charged response in answer to his daughter’s initial confusion: What would you take if the house were on fire?

Nothing is ablaze, of course, but a woman from the sheriff’s department is outside, monitoring this early departure, asking questions of Martin that we can’t hear, yet not stopping his wish to drive off quickly. Ella, whose innocent, concerned face shows an interest in reading her father’s moods, has picked up that a new horizon isn’t entirely lamentable. Besides, there’s a rousing singalong to “Mony Mony” in the car (a song we gather was enjoyed greatly when their mom was alive), Charlie’s in goofy spirits and, at the gas station, Dad buys a kite for when they hit Utah’s salt flats. Fun has to be built into road trips, no?

But under the big open skies and cramped spaces of their eastward journey in a faulty car, traveling between what we glean is a tough past and a hoped-for future, we know something’s off. And it’s that emotional space — how Martin’s faraway stare and his attentiveness to his kids’ comfort becomes a growing concern — where Webley’s feature debut wants us: empathetic yet alert. As “Omaha” reveals itself with each stop along the I-80, you may be reminded of the acclaimed father-daughter feature “Aftersun” from a handful of years ago: a vacation story that seeded its own mysteries of hardship inside a recognizable pocket of unconditional love.

But Robert Machoian’s spare screenplay is built around its own nexus of hurt, togetherness and struggle, and as it rolls along, your faith in the security of a tight-knit bond is routinely tested by the storm clouds in Martin’s face. Magaro (“Past Lives,” “First Cow”), a chameleonic actor, has always borne an authenticity that naturally draws focus, but “Omaha” makes stellar use of how good he is with characters who push back against the camera’s ability to penetrate.

Webley, through the intimate lens of Paul Meyers’ sure-footed cinematography, mostly sticks to Ella’s perspective — especially when we aren’t privy to some of Martin’s more solo moments, and can only guess at what’s going on. But he lets Magaro’s simmering fragility be a real presence: the sputtering glow of someone afraid to be the protagonist of his own story.

While not exactly winding down its tenseness, “Omaha” exits with some explanatory text about the origins of its narrative that will punctuate your sadness with shocks. (It makes you wonder if what you’ve just seen was more of a feature-length PSA than movie.) But the jolt is brief. As the memory of it washes back over you, “Omaha” lingers, like a devastating short story — devastating because it’s about a pained father for whom the road ahead only seems to get narrower.

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com