The difference in their backgrounds — a difference of religion, class and color — gives their relationship a Romeo-and-Juliet quality. Maria’s skin is darker than Peter’s, she attends a Baptist church (he is Catholic), and her mother and brother don’t approve. Maria is about to start college in New Orleans, and her eagerness to escape Natchitoches matches Peter’s determination to stay in Cane River.

As they flirt and banter their way toward love and grapple with family matters, Jenkins embeds their emotional and domestic struggles in a lyrical contemplation of landscape that is, in turn, nested within a historical argument. When Peter first meets Maria, she is reading “The Forgotten People,” a scholarly work by Gary B. Mills on the history and sociology of “Cane River’s Creoles of Color.” The book is more than a prop; it’s a reference point, to be cited and quarreled with as Peter and Maria try to figure out who they are to each other.

Sometimes, Peter protests that the past shouldn’t have any bearing on their lives. Yes, some of his ancestors owned slaves, but that was a long time ago. And, besides, other ancestors were themselves enslaved. It’s complicated. He doesn’t think of himself as not black, but he also doesn’t like to think about race too much. He’d rather write his poems, and find other ways to impress the sometimes skeptical Maria.

For his part, Jenkins is careful not to flatten his characters into representatives of a narrowly defined community or point of view. The dominant feeling in “Cane River” is affection. It’s what the characters express toward one another (even at moments of high conflict) and what the director conveys, toward them and the landscape they inhabit, in every shot and musical cue.