Signature Move

With its likable characters, local color and cross-cultural sparks, "Signature Move" has unsentimental sweetness and pluck.

While this likely will appeal strongly to LGBTQ audiences, I hope it finds a wider viewing, as the acting and the dialogue make for excellent drama.

It doesn't all work. But the film's gently erratic personality is winning nonetheless, and it's interesting to watch Reeder, in the first project she has done without a hand in the writing, make sense of the tones.

This plays like a hipster version of a Nia Vardalos comedy.

Vivid details can animate almost any old chestnut, and many of the variations on this timeworn tale help to give the film its appeal.

The movie is a perfectly pleasant bonbon for its target audience.

Signature Move is visually stunning and does a great job of capturing Chicago and the diversity folded throughout the city.

Signature Move is - like its heroine - cautious when tackling its most contentious themes.

[Jennifer] Reeder finds the perfect note on which to end.

Signature Move is a film adept at finding the gaps in this tangle of personal, familial and cultural stories.

The film finds its sweet spot in how the pair navigate their relationships with each other and their families, finding common ground as outsiders in American culture.

In telling their story, Reeder and Mirza finally make good on the abruption of the North American New Queer Cinema by 9/11, returning to the celebratory multicultural, intergenerational, complex lesbian films of the last century's end.