Entertainment

Girlfriend

Credit filmmaker Justin Lerner with getting an affecting per formance out of Evan Sneider, a longtime friend with Down syndrome but no prior acting experience, in the emotionally manipulative and problematic melodrama “Girlfriend.”

By far the best scenes are shared by Sneider and his struggling but devoted mother, played by the seldom-seen Amanda Plummer, who works with him at an eatery somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, she dies in her sleep early on, and Lerner resorts to increasingly desperate plot contrivances.

For starters, an uncle hands the developmentally challenged hero $15,000 in cash at his mother’s funeral. Really? He promptly uses a grand to pay back rent for a desperate single mom (Shannon Woodward) he’s long nursed a crush on.

“Girlfriend” becomes more and more unbelievable and creepy as she repays Evan with glimpses of nudity in lieu of sex. Our hero also receives dubious romantic advice from her sleazy redneck ex-boyfriend (Jackson Rathbone of “Twilight”) and father of the child, who inevitably goes missing.