Family Resemblances

Sent away by her parents so that she can recover from boyfriend problems and they can sort out their shaken marriage, 15-year-old Karen is spending a hot summer vacation in New Franklin, Ill.a small ""Midwestern town bisected by the B & O tracks''where her chic schoolteacher aunt Augusta, 35, lives alone in the tall brick ancestral manse. Karen and Augusta talk with laconic awkwardness about love and growing up; Augusta busily hammers away on a garden gazebo that eventually collapses. Furnace repairman Jerry, one of Augusta's many lovers, comes to help and brings along a new beau for Karen, a youth named George. But Karen's edgy self-consciousness is hard to believe: she is embarrassed, for instance, to be seen buying Seventeen magazine. Pei's notion of kid talk is bland and cliche-ridden. Unfortunately, the action trudges on with drowsy slowness. (April 7)