It’s ironic that Tomorrow is Today begins with a line about miracles. There’s a part of me that believes it’s a miracle this film turned out to be as intriguing and endearing as it did. Then there’s another part of me, a part that was so moved by this small melodrama it actually surprised me.

In truth, I shouldn’t like this movie. It’s a film that, were it made by a studio, would have turned out like A Walk to Remember. Yet, in the hands of Frederic Lumiere the smallest pieces of these characters, their silent suffering and their flashes of interconnectedness, overwhelm the viewer with a sense of wholeness.

The characters are incomplete when the film begins. One lost soul, a transient named Greg (Mark Hefti) who in his former life ran a red light and killed his pregnant wife, returns to the place he met his spouse to commit suicide. He’s saved however when a 16-year-old local girl named Julie (Scout Taylor-Compton) finds his body washed up on the beach.

Julie learns about Greg’s past when she Googles his name, and she knows he needs her help. As she tries to mend this one broken life, she begins to transform the lives of everyone else around her.

One of the lives Julie transforms is that of her father (Ken Arnold). He has remarried, but she knows he loved his wife, her mother. She also knows what the future holds for their relationship. That’s why I believe every second of Julie’s goodhearted selflessness when it comes to saving Greg. That’s also why I believe their relationship never manifests itself sexually.

I joked about the same idea when I saw the film A Walk to Remember. Instead of reading the greatest novels of all time, the cynic in me always said Mandy Moore’s character might as well be having sex before she dies. Here though, I never questions Julie’s relationship with Greg. The dynamic, a girl half his age being a median between his wife and his child’s ages, seems so tender and so complex that it washes past all things carnal.

Maybe the spiritual nature of these relationships is why I think Tomorrow is Today would play well with a religious audience. But unlike browbeating claptrap like Facing the Giants, Tomorrow is Today stands first as an artistic statement.

Director Lumiere is a master of his medium. What he does is often so simple yet so elegant. His tracking shots or a swooping crane shot feel like he is making an Citizen Kane-like contribution to the medium, when in fact they are just well-placed and well-timed techniques that are unusual for a production this size.

If the film has one weakness it’s that the relationships are often so understated that upon first viewing it may be hard to see just how deep the connections run. But the second time you watch it, everything is so clear, so vividly illustrated that this film clings to your soul.