Filmgoers who enjoy a high-calorie diet of Double Whopper action flicks and fizzy comedies might find themselves momentarily disoriented wading into The Pool, a miraculous, American-made Hindi film that is every bit as tranquil as the blue-green reservoir that serves as its abiding metaphor.

Chris Smith's work is based on a Randy Russell short story set in Iowa. The film has been transported to India. No matter, its theme - poverty promotes longing and fear in equal measure - is universal. But don't be put off by talk of metaphors and universal themes. The beauty of The Pool is that it feels as if it has no agenda. Characters wander. There are no evident story arcs - no preordained certainties. Life happens.

The film follows an 18-year-old janitor mopping (and moping) away the hours in a no-star hotel outside Panjim. The young man, Venkatesh, is always late for work, which plainly bores him. He becomes somewhat more animated roaming the city with best friend, Jhangir , an 11-year-old busboy.

The one highlight of Venkatesh's day comes when he disappears into Panjim's suburbs and climbs a mango tree; a perch with a clear view of an unruffled turquoise pool. Who could own such a wonderful extravagance? What would it feel like to escape the day's drudgery, floating without a care?

Battling shyness, Venkatesh presents himself to the pool's wealthy owner, Nana Patekar, and volunteers to help prune his estate's tangled garden. He also hangs around with Nana's inexplicably angry teenage daughter, Ayesha.

Eventually, the wealthy landowner offers his protégé a scholarship to a local school. Once he receives a proper education, Venkatesh can come and live with him, Nana promises. In the meantime, the teenager is given access to the pool. "But be careful," the older man warns. "My son drowned there."

And so Venkatesh learns that his newfound Garden of Eden is more tangled than is immediately apparent. That The Pool works so well is indeed a miracle. Filmmaker Smith (American Movie) can't speak Hindi. Nor his performers, English. The principal actors, Venkatesh and Jhangir are illiterate street kids who were spoon fed bits of Hindi dialogue. Chavan thought he was in a documentary. (And why not? All the film's actors go by their own names.)

The film's premise, however, allows for the amateurs' halting manner. Poor kids would be reticent in the company of a rich landowner and his worldly daughter. And Smith's unobtrusive style seldom taxes his actors' range. The filmmaker never emphasizes scenes or employs close-ups. There are no declarations of creative authority or presumptions of intimacy here. We watch from a distance as Venkatesh, Jhangir and Ayesha go boating, talk in fitful bursts and loaf in quiet, bird-filled parks.

Then circle back to the empty, beautiful, dangerous pool. A British film journal, Sight & Sound, once challenged its audience to select between "Ray and Ray" - humanist Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray and Hollywood camera-for-hire, Nicholas Ray, creator of some of one of the 1950s most sublime Double Whoppers (Rebel Without a Cause).

Why choose? Comfortable big-screen entertainment comes our way every week, thankfully. But we should always welcome films like The Pool: an artful, unresolved mystery that lingers in the mind long after we leave the theatre.