ROAD TO FLORIDA IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

`WHAT ALICE FOUND'' is a modest but pungent slice of interstate life that won an award at the Sundance Film Festival for, among other things, ``emotional truth.''

It sure earned that part of it. Filmed on smudgy-but-I've-seen-far-worse digital video, A. Dean Bell's movie plays for the longest time like a cautionary thriller about a naive young woman's downfall. But it proves to be far more specific, peculiar and unpredictable than that.

Our distressed damsel is a poor, plain and not very bright 18-year-old New Hampshire-ite named, well, Alice. Played with just the right mix of impulsiveness, desperation and obliviousness by newcomer Emily Grace, Alice can't stand her downscale life with her divorced, embarrassing mother. Soon after her best friend heads off to party college in Miami, Alice hits the road to join her, despite the fact that her grades aren't good enough to get her into even this farce of a school.

At a rest stop off the Jersey Turnpike, however, someone slits a tire on Alice's old jalopy. A friendly retired couple, Sandra (Judith Ivey) and Bill (Bill Raymond), help her put on the spare. They shadow her in their big, comfortable RV - for her protection, they say - and when Alice's engine mysteriously seizes up, the older folks offer to take her to Florida.

Bill seems like a benign enough joker. And Southernly Sandra appears to be the doting, fun-loving mom Alice never had. She treats the girl to a makeover (sub Kmart but still an improvement), offers laughs, encouragement and beer, and generally endears herself to Alice and us in the audience.

Until, that is, we discover that Sandra and Bill aren't exactly retired. And that they ply their less-than-legal trade in a circuitous manner that keeps delaying Alice's entry into the Sunshine State. Broke herself, Alice seems all-too-vulnerably easy to talk into making a little cash herself - which her mentors, in the traditional manner, take a cut of while keeping the rest ``safe'' for her.

But on further discovery, we learn that Alice is no innocent. And the couple she quite rightly grows more and more distrustful of may just have a few lessons this girl of pronouncedly limited prospects might do well to learn.

Only very adroit writing and acting can subvert moral expectations and make you appreciate deeper truths. In only his second feature film, scripter-director Bell pulls off this presentational sleight-of-hand with a humble but marvelously effective illusion of ease.

As for the actresses, Ivey, quite simply, gives one of the richest performances of the year as a good-time girl well past her prime in every way but the one that really counts: her spirit. But Ivey also invests Sandra with a formidable, scary ability to size people up that in no way contradicts her ditzy granny behavior.

Young Grace, too, brings a broad diversity of emotional intelligence to a character who, while not exactly stupid, has a very difficult time coordinating her choices with thought. Alice is one of the more realistic teenage girls put on screen lately; even the very good bad adolescents of ``thirteen'' are way overamped by comparison. The fascinating, detailed journey into these two very different women makes ``What Alice Found'' a trip well worth taking.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

WHAT ALICE FOUND - Three stars

(Not rated: sex, nudity, language, mild violence)

Starring: Emily Grace, Judith Ivey, Bill Raymond.

Director: A. Dean Bell.

Running time: 1 hr. 36 min.

Playing: Landmark's Nuart, West Los Angeles; University Town Center 6, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Well-wrought characterizations and atypical motivations mark this video-shot drama about an aimless young woman who is mentored, in sometimes alarming ways, by an elderly, motor-home-driving couple she meets on the road.

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Photo:

Emily Grace, right, gets more than she bargained for on a road trip in the motor home of Judith Ivey in ``What Alice Found.''