"What Lies West," a gentle drama about the budding friendship between a recent college graduate and a 16-year-old, is an original story by debut writer/director Jessica Ellis. But it feels like an adaptation, particularly of the sorts of very popular books about growing up in the suburbs that kids used to read in the late 20th century US, by authors like Beverly Cleary (for elementary school kids) and Judy Blume (harder-edged, for tweens and teens). Set during the summer in hilly California, and building towards a long hike that tests the main characters, "What Lies West" is set squarely in the real world. The details of the central friendship and the characters' relationships with their parents and peers ring true. But this not a high-stakes, deep-and-dark tale of emotional turmoil and loss, nor is it meant to be. Ellis has cleared out a space where almost nothing but the central friendship matters. Everything else in the young women's lives is connected to that, but doesn't define it. Uneventful in terms of action and jeopardy, to the point of opening itself to criticism that "nothing happens," it's a throwback to 1990s indie flicks that could build an entire self-contained (but compact) feature around one relationship, a few adjunct friends and family members, and a handful of available locations, and still get released, seen and appreciated.