MICHAEL ANGARANO AND CONNOR PAOLO IN SNOW ANGELS

An excess of freedom

This is the story (adapted from a novel by Stewart O’Nan) of the accidental death of a little girl and the killing of her mother, events that touch the lives of a group of people, notably a young man in high school. The mother used to babysit for him and he had a crush on her. Each of Gordon Green's previous films--George Washington, All the Real Girls, and Undertow--are marked by originality of texture, sense of place, a way of creeping up on people sideways. That happens here too--but as before things don't always work, and Green can make an hour seem like an awfully long time.

Annie, the mother (the beautiful and excellent Kate Beckinsale), works in a Chinese restaurant with her pal Barb (Amy Sedaris) and the high schooler Arthur (Michael Angarano), who still eyes her. Annie's sleeping with Barb's comically self-absorbed husband Nate (Nicky Katt). The big wild card in this constantly reshuffling deck is Annie's estranged husband, Glenn (Sam Rockwell).

Now, it's obvious that Rockwell excels at playing madcap characters. He's great as Chuck Barris in Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and more than game as Zaphod Beeblebrox in A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But he's not right for Glenn. He tries to make Glenn into an amiable clown. Only Glenn, a desperate man who's stalking his wife, just isn't a character who really can be or should be made to seem funny. Though he's bumbling and eager with his parents, and just strangely out of tune with his little girl on an outing, he's quickly to emerge as far worse than that--tiresome, out of control, desperate, and dangerous to himself and others with tragic consequences. After surviving a bizarre suicide attempt Glenn has become his own lunatic version of a born-again Christian. Instead of being scared straight he's been scared wacko. Does Glenn have a personality? At one point he declares to himself that he's nobody. He's not a Sam Rockwell person. He's more a John C. Reilly or a William H. Macy character.

Meanwhile a lot of other things are going on in this snow-covered Pennsylvania town (extra snow because this was shot in Canada). Glenn is living at his parents', so we see them. He's got a job at a warehouse rug store run by his born-again mentor Rafe (Daniel Lillford). Arthur's parents are breaking up--though in the movie, they seem reconciled at the end--perhaps to add a warm note in this largely depressing film. Arthur is falling in love with a new girl at school, Lila (Olivia Thirlby). In most scenes couples are cheating or fighting, except for the teenagers. To anchor the movie, it keeps coming back to a football field where a marching band (Arthur plays a big horn) is practicing when fatal shots are heard in the distance.

We may feel as if we've been left wandering around in that snow-covered field. The scenes are rich in detailed observation but the characters are handled randomly in a meandering sequence that keeps us from getting involved with them--though we'd just as soon simply avoid having to watch the embarrassing, incomprehensible, and finally despicable Glenn. This non-involvement is how the hour gets to seem so long, and why critics haven't been much impressed by Snow Angels--which Warner Brothers is allowing to die, or maybe just freeze over. And this is a shame, as all Green's failures are a shame (his debut George Washington was hailed as a masterpiece, but that promise seems illusory). This movie is a bummer, and its climax is very unpleasant to watch.

Yet there are redeeming features. Amy Sedaris is a natural; Niky Katt is droll. As Arthur's father and mother, Griffin Dunne and Jeanetta Arnette are fine. So are the stark winter images shot by Green's regular cinematographer, Tim Orr. Above all the one altogether happy sequence, the romance between Arthur and Lila, sneaks up on you, and sings. Lila is bespectacled and toothy, nerdy like Arthur, but she's cute underneath--as Arthur is adorable. Neither of them is really a nerd, nor are they victims of the usual movie-high-school pecking orders. They go from talking shyly to kissing to sex by a slow and natural progression. With a few deft touches, this teenage romance is sketched in as delicately and truly as any such thing on film.

Lila takes lovely black and white photographs with a twin-lens reflex camera. Arthur narrates the film and is its underlying sensibility--though that seems wrong. He and the other ordinary people seem to belong to another film, one without tragedy and violence. The film is best at little moments that have nothing to do with tragedy--the earnestness of the band director (Tom Noonan); the camaraderie of Annie and Barb; Nate's cheating even on the woman he's cheating on his wife with; the way another boy (Connor Paolo) relates to Arthur and they smoke dope behind the bushes when they're supposed to be searching for a lost child. David Gordon Green might do better with more constraints.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.