July Rising

Andy is a 16-yr-old girl living and working with her grandfather on his fruit farm in California, an area in the northern part of the wine country. Her mother is no longer alive, she has an aunt who is a chef in San Francisco. Andy is very handy, a very serious and hard worker that also is able to repair most things that break on the farm. But grandpa has a secret, the farm is broke, it may be on the verge of forced sale.

One evening Andy is cooking dinner and gramps doesn't respond when she calls him. She finds him passed away in his chair. This brings a new hurdle, the land is willed to Andy but being under legal age must become a ward of her aunt. That doesn't go easy as Andy had long ago built up a disrespect for her aunt who she thinks deserted the family and the farm.

The story is mainly about Andy figuring out where she wants to go with her life, and part of that is struggling with her sexual identity. It isn't addressed directly but when a boy, a long-time friend, kisses her later she tells a friend that it didn't feel like anything. My own interpretation is that she was not into boys.

My wife and I watched it at home, streaming on Amazon Prime. It is not a long movie, right about 80 minutes and all the cast are second-tier actors. It has the feel of a made-for-TV movie. While we enjoyed the drama and Andy's working through her struggles we both observed that it ended with no resolution. Except maybe farming is not a good future for a young girl and it took the events to teach that to her. A coming of age.