PARK CITY - "Come Early Morning" is a simple story yet told with such conviction, delicacy and instinct for truth that it carries keen emotional power. This is the first film from actress Joey Lauren Adams, so one can only hope she has more stories inside her for she has genuine storytelling talent. This one obviously came from the heart as she is writing about people and a place she knows all too well - a small Arkansas town where a person can live a life of desperation without even realizing it.

Another person working from the heart is her star, Ashley Judd, who perfectly embodies a Southern woman whose father issues have become men issues. Riding on Judd's mesmerizing performance, this film with a carefully marketed release could become a modest hit in specialty cinemas and later in home video.

Judd's Lucy Fowler wakes up too many mornings with a hangover and guy in bed she wants nothing to do with. She is an expert in exit strategies but never understands the nature of this behavioral pattern. Otherwise, she leads a responsible adult life with a solid job as a contractor under an appreciative boss (Stacey Keach) and a caring roommate (Laura Prepon), who encourages Lucy to pay more attention to the "courting" aspect to relationships before jumping into bed. Her family is a mess. Her mom (Diane Ladd) bitterly resents her second husband - there's a lot of pattern behavior here, too - and her dad (Scott Wilson) is emotionally disconnected from everyone including his daughter.

The father-daughter dynamic is the key, but it speaks well to Adams' sophistication as a writer-director that she doesn't try to "solve" that relationship. If she can get her heroine to recognize the source of her behavior, then healing will begin. Another sign of the intelligence of the storytelling is that the man who enters Lucy's life, Cal (handsome Jeffrey Donovan), is not necessarily her savior. But he does represent an opportunity to explore romance and affection instead of sweaty, drunken sex. Donovan gives an open, vulnerable performance without sacrificing any of the macho all Southern men deeply prize.

There are subplots about a puppy Lucy rescues, a jukebox containing Western oldies she also rescues and a job offer in another state. But the heart of the matter remains with Lucy's turning aside any self-pity or blaming of others to recognize that she must first love herself before she can love others.

A soundtrack of Western songs and Western-flavored score by Alan Brewer fits right in. Tom Orr's cinematography and Meg Retricker's editing is, like the movie itself, simple yet eloquent.