All the Real Girls | AccessAtlanta

All the Real Girls

Schneider and Deschanel and love in a bowling alley.

FILM FACTS

Starring: Paul Schneider and Zooey Deschanel
Director: David Gordon Green
Rating: R for language and sexual situations
Genre: Drama, Romance

Discuss this film | Official movie site

See showtimes (R) 108 minutes

Grade: C

Verdict: Not real enough.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
(none)

David Gordon Green has already received the blessings of both the critical establishment and Hollywood heavyweights. Time magazine refers to him as "America's most gifted young auteur"; and Terrence Malick ("The Thin Red Line") is producing Green's next movie, the long-awaited adaptation of "A Confederacy of Dunces."

Green's romantic Southern idyll, "All the Real Girls," could just as well be called "Splendor in the Grass That Needs Mowing." He's taken the breathy clichés of such late '50s/early '60s melodramas as "Splendor in the Grass" and "A Summer Place" and made them semi-poetic by injecting them with the evocative backcountry lushness of small-town North Carolina. A Carolinian himself, Green knows the odd battered beauty of rusted-out cars or the myriad shades of color on an old door whose paint is peeling. The quiet, unexpected beauty he uncovers in everyday things has been compared to Malick's films. But Green is no Malick, and his movie is no "Days of Heaven."

In a hamlet nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a small-town lothario named Paul (Paul Schneider) has seduced every girl in a 25-mile radius. He's one of those laid-back Southern-boy studs who doesn't have any ill feelings toward women. He just likes to love 'em and leave 'em. There's never been any compelling reason to stay.

But when his pal Tip's (Shea Whigham) 18-year-old sister, Noel (Zooey Deschanel), comes home after six sequestered years at boarding school, something happens. He doesn't want to seduce her. He doesn't want to leave her. He simply wants to be around her, a feeling he's never had.

Soon they're nuzzling in the bowling alley and renting a motel room where they can have a pillow fight (talk about sublimated sexual tension . . . ). But to stay with Noel, he's forced to give up his hang time with his buddies and give up his friendship with Tip, who's known Paul too long and too well to believe he's changed his ways.

The film has its share of good moments. Some are down-home funny, like when the guys plop into a booth at the local diner. "I want something greasy," says one. "What do yąall got with the most fat?" asks another.

Others are tender and fresh. Early in their courtship, Noel leans over and whispers "Hello, hello, hello" into Paul's ear. The word echoes as if a new and unexplored portion of his life is greeting him.

However, much of the film, which so much wants to seem natural and unforced, comes off as contrived and slightly precious. Paul's single mom (a game Patricia Clarkson) earns her living as a party clown. This gives Green the opportunity for an embarrassing "I Pagliacci" scene in which Clarkson has a painful heart-to-heart with her son as tears streak her white face.

Deschanel, daughter of the great cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ("The Black Stallion"), has been regularly stealing scenes in movies such as "The Good Girl" and "Almost Famous." She's enchanting here, with her big blue Macauley Culkin eyes and vibrant presence. Unfortunately, her character is not. Noel is more a romanticized concept than a real person. When she says stuff like, "Sometimes, I pretend I've only got 10 seconds to live," you start to think about Winona Ryder in the dismal "Autumn in New York," when she tells Richard Gere "I can smell the rain."

Schneider, who co-wrote the script (which might explain this) is woefully miscast. Suggesting a cross between David Schwimmer and the young Mandy Patinkin, he lacks the devilish twinkle and fluid body language of a Southern bad boy.

You keep waiting for "All the Real Girls" to sneak up on you. To suddenly have an unexpectedly profound effect. But it never does. Rather, the picture takes on the persona of Paul's slacker pals. They just kinda slide along, and so does the movie.