Brought to you by the creative minds behind Pencil Fighting: The Life and Times of Team Balderdash, the 20-minute short Inventing Kin is a dramedy about missed opportunities and life's second chances. It's close in spirit to Zach Braff's Garden State, which was also about a lost soul returning home to make peace with the past. This new film lacks the broad characterizations that made Pencil Fighting so memorable, but it displays some of the quirkiness that sets the films of Fro Rojas apart. (Full disclosure: Rojas and I both went to Miami International University of Art & Design, where we made a film together.)

Kin (Nikki Borges) is a sensitive, somewhat directionless girl in her early 20s. Estranged from an eccentric family of famous inventors, Kin sees her life as "a series of unimportant moments I've obviously given way more importance to." Her quarterlife crisis is easy to relate to, and indeed, the best scenes in Inventing Kin feature the character all by herself, counting the "cottage cheese" on a popcorn ceiling.

Written by Andrew Negrin, the film's first turning point comes when Kin hears from her seriously infirm father (played by Mark Macaulay, who also appeared in Pencil Fighting). The rest of the film is made up of earnest, dialogue-driven scenes at the family's estate. Some of the acting is a little flat. The scene where the old man explains the invention he never finished - a "right sided mirror" - is especially unconvincing.

I think this director's style - heavily influenced by the films of Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) - is better suited to comedies and busier narratives. Pencil Fighting had a fairly straightforward story, but that film kept interrupting itself with flashbacks and biographical details. Inventing Kin has some idiosyncrasies, and it's at these moments that the director really shines. The highlight is a beautifully composed flashback shot of Kin at a birthday party.

Shot on 35mm, the movie is easy on the eyes, displaying both top-notch set design and location shooting. The best performance in the four-member cast, which also includes Melvin Lima and George Smith, is by Borges. Together, she and Rojas create a delicately balanced portrait of a girl who, like most young people, isn't quite sure what to make of her newfound freedom.

Reviewed at the Cosford Cinema, University of Miami School of Communications, April 9, 2009. Visit Inventing Kin on Facebook here.