“I know I am really lucky. I think I am really happy,” Natalie says in voice-over amid a montage of Vermont images at the outset of NOSEY PARKER, John O’Brien’s entry at NFF8 and the last installment of his trilogy about his hometown, Tunbridge, Vermont. It was part of the festival’s effort to feature a New England filmmaker. O’Brien knows his territory (he’s a farmer, Justice of the Peace, and debate coach at the local high school), and his gentle, probing style presents insights only a native would know.

At 33, Natalie is a lonely, spoiled, urban transplant who ventures along with her therapist husband Richard, in search of nirvana among the simple folks. Up-country, she says, there’s “less of everything” and the Wal-Mart is “50 minutes away.” Natalie can’t get a grip on her new situation, and that’s the set-up. She lives in a trophy house in an isolated clearing with a husband many years her senior. She’s surrounded by red-and-gold-splashed mountains, but she languishes on the edge of angst and depression because she feels she’s neglected. She can’t bring herself to cross cultures and reach out to the community. It’s a second marriage for Richard who’s been-there-and-done-that with a family of two kids he’s left behind. Only later does it come out what Natalie really wants, and it’s not made of polished oak, or marble, or gold.

The bridge between the cultures is crossed not by the sophisticates, rather connection comes when a trio of “listers” (tax assessors) comes to re-evaluate the swanky piece of real estate after alterations were made. Led by inquisitive George, they scope the house from top to bottom. George wanders upstairs and noses around well-appointed rooms right out of Martha Stewart and sifts through drawers and closets for telltale signs of how rich people live. He’s dumbfounded by the disposal that “eats your garbage.”

The story shifts when Natalie becomes as curious of the natives as they are of her and Richard. The fishbowl works both ways. She’s as nosey as the gossips, who can’t fathom why Richard brings his patients home, and who suspect “kinky stuff” must be going on behind the walls. Still Natalie laments, “I came here to see trees, and I see Malibu.”

The two snoops come together in a mutual reaching out: George is hired as a handyman and Natalie cracks her shell of isolation. Both lives merge in unexpected ways, which lead to insights into both their worlds and a life-changing epiphany inspired by George that changes their lives forever.

NOSEY PARKER melds genres of filmmaking-the documentary and narrative-with improvisation at its heart. This is O’Brien’s first film to use professional actors, but only in part. The film was unscripted. “I told the story scene-by-scene to the actors and to the people of Tunbridge,” he says. The lines were improv but come out with an unusual naturalness seldom seen on the American screen. His mother played one of the gossips in the film, and all the other locals are his friends and community members.

NOSEY PARKER’s star is George Lyford, who plays himself, with crusty charm and unpolished grace. He’s like the archetype of a superior rustic, uncorrupted by civilization, who’s more sincere and genuine than his sophisticated counterparts. It’s to O’Brien’s credit that he was able to elicit such credible performances from George and his fellow “actors.”

O’Brien, too, captured Vermont’s signature splendor of place: autumn color amid seasonal change, in several instances from above. “I hired a private plane for aerial shots. The DP hung out the plane’s window with the camera, and I hung on to both.” He shot the film in Super 16 mm and then had the image enlarged for screening. Financing, every indie’s bugbear, was solved after he gathered 20 limited partners who each gave him $10,000. His own Bellwether Films handles distribution.

“It’s a different movie than I set out to do,” O’Brien says. “But I’m satisfied with it as far as the themes I was explaining-old Vermonters vs. new Vermonters and of eulogizing old Vermonters-and of experimenting with professional actors and non-professional actors.”

In a poignant footnote, George Lyford died after the film was completed, and in a tag at the end O’Brien dedicated the film to his memory.