Angelina Jolie owns "Changeling"

The line between drama and melodrama is a fine one, and Clint Eastwood steps on both sides of it in his elegantly sad new film, "Changeling." It's based on the kind of true story you couldn't make up: Christine Collins, a mother in 1928 Los Angeles, is devastated when her 9-year-old son, Walter, is kidnapped. Months after his disappearance, the police notify her that he's been found in another state, and an elaborate reunion is staged at the train station, complete with an army of reporters. The only problem: The boy isn't hers, and the corrupt police department, reveling in good PR after finding him, refuses to admit its error. "Take him on a trial basis," the police captain tells the distraught mother. But who is this boy? And what happened to her son?

This is the stuff of both tragedy and high comedy (a doctor, summoned by the police, explains that the returned "Walter" is three inches shorter because, well, sometimes children's spines shrink), and "Changeling" at times struggles to find the right tone. Its villains — a twitchy serial killer (Jason Butler Harner), a clenched-jaw police captain (Jeffrey Donovan), a casually cruel mental-institution doctor (Denis O'Hare) — are so evil they're practically cackling; its heroes, particularly the beautiful mother (Angelina Jolie), are paragons of goodness. (Eastwood does stir the pot a bit, though, by casting the snake-lipped John Malkovich as a good guy.) This is old-fashioned moviemaking, reveling in emotional high notes rather than subtlety.

But Eastwood, working from a screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski, knows he has a great story to tell, and "Changeling" for most of its deliberate running time works remarkably well. There are slips in his control: a few scenes of hellish violence against children seem like they'd belong better in a horror film, and Jolie spends much of the movie with her face encased in odd, waxy makeup that makes her look as if she's been artlessly colorized. (No one else in the movie looks this way.) Malkovich, playing a minister and community activist who helps Christine in her quest for justice, gives his usual interesting performance but doesn't really have a character to play.

None of this matters much, though, next to Jolie's performance, which takes hold of the movie and transforms it. This larger-than-life actress here plays a very regular woman (she's a telephone operator and single mother) with a small, soft voice that turns quavery when she's troubled. Her expression when she greets "Walter" at the train station is remarkable; already pale, she seems suddenly drained of life. Christine is a gentle woman who's accustomed to being polite, and we watch her gradually abandon her manners as she fights to be heard. Jolie nails the emotional scenes — and there are plenty of them — but she's at her most effective at her quietest; one lovely shot, of Christine sitting in profile in Walter's dark bedroom hugging his teddy bear, is a perfect yet unsentimental picture of desolation and despair.

Eastwood, with production designer James J. Murakami, beautifully recreates Los Angeles of the '20s and '30s, down to the shiny red streetcars and the marcel waves in Malkovich's hair. (Watch for a fond tribute to Eastwood's longtime production designer Henry Bumstead, who died in 2006 at the age of 91 after completing work on "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of Our Fathers." A picturesque small-town cafe in "Changeling" bears the sign "Bummy's Diner," the designer's nickname.) But "Changeling" is ultimately a story told in a mother's eyes. "That's not my son," she says, over and over, her world — and this movie — reduced to four words, repeated in tones of gentle steel.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725

or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com