***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, Patricia Clarkson, Shea Whigham, Danny McBride, Benjamin Mouton, Heather McComb, and Maurice Compte
Directed by David Gordon Greene, written by Greene and Paul Schneider, & photographed by Tim Orr and Adam Stone
2003
108 min R
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2003
“All the Real Girls” is, as the title kind-of sort-of implies, about the extraordinary nature of everything ordinary. It is a panorama of the beautiful and the mundane, of the profound and the vulgar. Gorgeous, jaw-dropping skylines of hills, trees, and brooks cross into run-down factories. A man ponders long and hard the inverse relationship between wealth and happiness while his young friend declares he might grow a beard. Dialogue is slice-of-life, with little mistakes, corrections, and throat-frogs, but it morphs into the poignancy of poetry. A young couple looks over the mountains and wonders about death, only to meet up later with a friend who goes by the name Bust-Ass. “All the Real Girls” is mundane talk mixed with the real meanings behind it, and compares lives usually considered by movies to be inconsequential with mythic, larger-than-life images.
Of course, “All the Real Girls” is a “dram-edy,” two shots of drama and one shot of comedy. Lately critics and audiences alike have been drawn to movies that defy the traditional dichotomy of smiling masks and frowning masks. By showing life as both grave and goofy, and by using characters that are both sympathetic and willing to become caricatures, movies like “American Beauty,” “Gosford Park,” and “Fargo” embrace a more genuine record of human emotions. In comparison, traditional dramas, even good ones like “The Hours” and “Far From Heaven,” sometimes appear stuffy and heavy-handed.
Which brings us to central question of “All the Real Girls:” is it about a mythic, all-powerful love that will last through the ages, or is it simply a first puppy love, a common love, something that happens all the time? I was left wondering, at the end of the film, should this boy and this girl be together? Because the movie straddles that line between the profound and the average, we see the love story both ways, which is the way the lovers must see it. When the movie ended, I wanted Paul and Noel to be together and I thought they had something special. But, as time went by, I began to wonder if they were discovering each other, or if each were just making a self-discovery. As time went by, I began to wonder if they were really right for each other. That’s the way these things feel: for a time, you’re so certain this is the right person. But then, after a while, it doesn’t seem that way so much anymore.
When we first meet Paul (Paul Schneider) and Noel (Zooey Deschenal), they are about to share their first kiss, outside an old, blasted warehouse in a small North Carolina town. He asks her what she’s thinking, and she says she’s thinking about an empty bucket nearby, and how good it makes her feel to be able to share her thoughts with him, however pointless they may be. They appear to be in their early twenties, but the love that grows between them is so innocent, so naïve, that I began to wonder if screenwriters Paul Schneider and David Gordon Greene intended the story to be about adolescents. (Greene, after all, wrote and directed “George Washington,” about a group of children about to enter that age where boys and girls are supposed to be afraid of one another.) They go walking in the woods, they tell stories that kind of go nowhere, they joke about flatulence. The point isn’t what they talk about, but that they can talk to each other, and, even better, they don’t feel like they need talk at all to impress the other.
Paul is a small town Casanova who, without much forethought or even seeming to try, has had his way with just about every girl in the little town. Noel is his best friend’s little sister, who has been away at college during Paul’s exploits, and who returns half-ignorant of his reputation. She thinks she can change him and he wants to be changed, but everyone has doubts. Her brother, for one, but even Paul’s mother (Patricia Clarkson) thinks she sees through him, and the aforementioned Bust-Ass (Danny McBride), also Paul’s friend, seems to be lying in wait. (While “All the Real Girls” visuals can only be appreciated on the big screen, the DVD contains several deliriously funny deleted scenes in which Bust-Ass, had the scenes been left in, would have seriously tilted the movie into a comedy.)
In our modern cynicism these lovers might appear too old for their silly sentiments, for making a tent in the bed, for whispering childishly, for wearing a calculator watch while fooling around. But maybe that’s the point, that these two late bloomers are only now discovering this beauty that has been around them all along. (Most movies aren’t about the beauty already in our lives, but about how the beauty already in our lives can be blown to bits by 2 rogue cops 2 close 2 the edge. That was a cheap shot, I’m sorry.)
Writer-director Greene gives the movie a kind of freestyle that matches the small town’s slow pace. He allows us to wander among the townsfolk and linger in places with people, to watch Paul’s uncle in the playground with his adopted daughter, to listen to Bust-Ass go on and on about his lap guitar, and to, yes, spot StrongBad creator Matt Chapman hanging out on a sofa in a field. We feel enveloped by these people, this season, and these people places. The film often moves so leisurely that for most of the first act we aren’t quite sure if the scenes are even in chronological order.
Greene’s style can occasionally hit us over the head with the Poignant Stick. But his film beautifully captures and recreates what often feels like a universal mood. It feels like walking outside after your girlfriend’s just dumped you and thinking how there shouldn’t be such a beautiful sunset when you feel so bummed.
Finished January 21st, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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