All coming-of-age films face the challenge of how to convey that intermediary period between childhood and adulthood, with all the confusion, awkwardness and self-searching that entails. Writer-director Paloma Schneideman’s drama Big Girls Don’t Cry meets that challenge, resulting in a tenderly drawn story about the slow process of a 14-year-old in rural New Zealand finding herself.

Schneideman’s film has a wonderfully unforced quality, unfolding in a deeply satisfying yet seemingly effortless way. It’s as if the cameras are simply recording events organically unfolding in front of them, which of course isn’t the case at all: a drama like this requires immense thought and preparation. (The film is the first to be produced under the auspices of the Jane Campion-led film-making course A Wave in the Ocean.)

The best coming-of-age stories tend to follow rebellious characters (like Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows and Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause), outsiders (like Mia Williams in Fish Tank and Sybylla Melvyn in My Brilliant Career), or the more experimental and vulnerable kind (like Heidi in Somersault and Lidia in Kristen Stewart’s magnificent directorial debut The Chronology of Water).

Now there’s Sid (Ani Palmer), who is a difficult person to categorise. She’s a bit of an introvert, a bit of a tough nut to crack: rarely outwardly friendly, but not exactly standoffish either.

It’s 2006, pre-smartphones and more or less pre-social media. During a six-week summer break, Sid starts hanging out with other teenagers – including Lana (Beatrix Rain Wolfe) and Stevie (Sophia Kirkwood Smith) – and doing very teenager-type stuff: attending house parties, drinking booze on the sly, and awkwardly interacting with the opposite sex. Sid’s father, Leo (Noah Taylor, so good recently in Thou Shalt Not Steal), is a straight-talking layabout and her best friend is Tia (Ngātaitangirua Hita), whom she doesn’t treat very well.

Schneideman gets the small moments just right. When Sid shotguns a beer, then deals with sleazy teenage boys; when she smokes weed for the first time; when she simply lounges about with friends or looks at herself in the mirror. At times she goes online, visiting seedy chatrooms and pretending to be other people for shits and giggles – an act that has real-world consequences, reflecting the new dangers and challenges presented by the internet in the 21st century. The film captures Sid coming to terms with her queerness, though that too is handled quite subtly.

None of the above scenarios are revelatory from a narrative perspective, and perhaps they seem insignificant when reduced to words. But they are evergreen – the kinds of moments and scenes that remain eternally relevant to the human experience, particularly the experience of being young.

Big Girls Don’t Cry is a class act aesthetically, with an autumnal colour scheme and intuitive-feeling editing. Cinematographer María Inés Manchego has a good eye for interesting depictions of everyday objects and occurrences, making domestic scenes look polished, though never in an overtly showy way.

The drama is boosted by highly captivating and layered performances, especially from Palmer as Sid. She’s restrained and yet so emotive, powerfully conveying a person going through profound growth and change. It’s unclear what aspects of her personality will fade away or remain across the course of her life.

Like the film itself, Palmer’s performance is not remotely didactic: we’re not told what to think or how to respond, particularly when it comes to moral perspectives. And again, like many excellent coming-of-age films, there’s a curious sense of open-endedness: a feeling that this story just keeps going, well beyond the final frame.

• Big Girls Don’t Cry is out in Australian cinemas now and select theatres in the US from 9 October, with a UK release yet to be announced