Gabe Nevins is Alex, a skateboarder dealing with a guard's death in "Paranoid Park." (Photo provided by IFC Films)

Paranoid Park is a place for only the most hardcore skateboarders.

A severe cluster of concrete ramps, rails and ledges, it was built by and for kids on the fringe: the runaways, the druggies, the ones who hop freight trains with no particular place to go.

Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park" isn't for everybody, either, even though it is a bit more accessible than the other similarly ethereal films the writer-director has offered in recent years: "Last Days," "Elephant" and "Gerry." It's also by far the best of the bunch.

Perhaps having source material to work from helps -- Van Sant's script is based on a novel by Blake Nelson -- even though he's tossed that structure in the air and turned it into a nonlinear narrative.

His subtly gripping story follows the teenage Alex (Gabe Nevins, a nonactor Van Sant found on MySpace), a skateboarder involved in the death of a security guard near Paranoid Park in Portland, Ore. It's a dreamlike pastiche of mounting guilt -- of the sounds and sensations that steadily wear on Alex's conscience, despite his perpetually placid, often disconnected exterior.

Many viewers will complain that the film is painfully slow, but if you give it a chance, you'll find it's hypnotic, mesmerizing, gorgeous; it comes at you in pieces that initially don't make sense, as life so often does. And while it may not appear on the surface as if much is going on, "Paranoid Park" is at once a mystery, a study of adolescent angst and a work of art.

Christopher Doyle, who's provided the lush cinematography for many of Wong Kar Wai's films, has created long, fluid takes on Super 8 of skateboarders zooming up and down and along steep edges, undulating in slow motion and setting an easy, early pace.

The quiet, low-key Alex longs to join them but knows he isn't good enough. When a friend suggests they visit the place for the first time, he tries to encourage Alex by saying, "No one's ever ready for Paranoid Park."

Besides, he's too sweet and pampered in his suburban bubble to fit in with the tough kids. But those big, brown eyes of Nevins' -- which make him look so cherubic at first -- take on a darker tone as the film progresses.

"Paranoid Park" is really about one young man during a pivotal and confusing point in his life. His parents are divorcing and fumbling to make the transition as painless as possible for Alex and his younger brother. (Except for the detective, Van Sant shoots all the adults in shadow, from the back or with their faces partially obscured. They aren't nearly as important as the world these teens have created for themselves.)

He's also vexed by the fact that his perky cheerleader girlfriend (Taylor Momsen from "Gossip Girl") is pressuring him to have sex. They're both virgins, but she's still completely confident in bopping up to him at his locker and asking cheerfully, "Hey, babe, did you get the condoms yet?"

But Nevins never shows that his character is vexed, and that's what's so intriguing. With his scruffy hair and array of hoodies, he wanders the halls with his head down like everyone else and keeps his problems -- big and small, life and death -- to himself, as most boys his age would.

There is one moment, though, when he tries to articulate his insecurity and fear while talking to a classmate (the likable Lauren McKinney). "There's, like, different levels of stuff," he says, "and something's happened to me."

It's not nearly as crowd-pleasing, but it's a far more realistic depiction of how today's youth communicate than any bon mot Ellen Page utters in "Juno."

*- By Christy Lemire / AP Movie Critic