Anywhere But Here doesn’t stay with a viewer long after the lights come up in the theater, but while it’s on, the film is gripping if not terribly substantial.

Susan Sarandon stars as Adele August, a 40-something divorcée who moves to Beverly Hills, CA, from Wisconsin to put some adventure and mobility into her life. For her teenage daughter Ann (Natalie Portman, The Phantom Menace), following her mom there is adventure enough. For all her years and education (she has a master’s degree), Adele has a child’s practicality and sense of responsibility. She’s just left a loving husband and headed west with only a job interview standing between her and homelessness. While Adele has an easy charm that gets her the job instantly, it can’t compensate for her reckless spending and foolish decisions. She naively breaks her heart over a self-absorbed dentist. She buys a Mercedes but skips out on paying the electric bill. Worse, Adele pushes Ann to become an actress even though Ann would rather go back home.

Ann’s attempts to keep her own sanity as her mother behaves in an increasingly outrageous and delusional manner are engaging even if they feel a bit overwrought and familiar. It’s hard not to think of Terms of Endearment or even the recent Slums of Beverly Hills when Ann and Adele start bickering. What makes the proceedings worth a look is Portman. She can handle all of the story’s emotional turns nicely and remains interesting even when the mother-daughter feuds get redundant. Ann eventually learns some of her mother’s strengths and adapts to her new home even though she doesn’t like it. Because there is a little bit of an arc to Ann’s story, Portman sometimes upstages the formidable Sarandon.

It’s not that Sarandon’s work is lacking. Instead, Anywhere But Here tells the audience very little about Adele other than her eccentricities. Director Wayne Wang (Smoke) and writer Alvin Sargent (Ordinary People) make things generally entertaining, but we never really get inside Adele’s head. Once the story ends, little is known about Adele’s background or how she has become the way she is. As a result, the struggle between them feels one-sided.

Getting the chance to see a veteran like Sarandon and a promising newcomer like Portman is enough to take an interest in this film, but their talents and the audience’s would have been better served if both characters had a chance to develop. (PG-13)

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