`Amy and Isabelle,' airing Sunday on ABC.(The Dallas Morning News)

Down by the old mill stream live an emotionally congealed single mom and her ripening, rebellious teen daughter.

Oprah Winfrey, professional pain-feeler, wants you to settle in and watch them heal in the latest quietly affecting movie from her Harpo Productions. "Amy and Isabelle," airing on ABC and adapted from the bestseller by first-time novelist Elizabeth Strout, is a worthy endeavor if you're in the mood for slow-paced storytelling drenched in mood music.

It's not likely to emancipate the tear ducts the way last season's "Tuesdays With Morrie" did. That was one heckuva Oprah-fest, and an Emmy winner, too. Amy and Isabelle doesn't have the same emotional pull, although it gamely tugs.

Elisabeth Shue, an Oscar nominee as a prostitute in 1995's "Leaving Las Vegas," is at the opposite end here as painfully prim and proper Isabelle Goodrow. She's wasting away in Shirley Falls, a small New England mill town with seemingly little to offer but humdrum. While her co-workers at the mill keep chattering away, Isabelle silently deploys an upturned nose

Meanwhile, her 16-year-old daughter, Amy (Hanna Hall), is dutifully underfoot but starting to chafe. She sneaks smokes with her more worldly high school friend, Stacy (Stephi Lineburg), before plunging into a secret sexual relationship with math teacher Peter Robertson (Martin Donovan).

When Isabelle finds out, she's shattered. But her own secret past also gnaws at her. Life-changing lessons in love and understanding will be taught in due time, which doesn't mean the ending is entirely gift-wrapped. Viewers are left to imagine the preordained last act. For some, that could be a letdown. Others might ...