Review of Snow Angels (2007) by Ronald S — 06 Jan 2009

The first half of this deadpan drama unfurls in the ominous dusk of an terrible tragedy that shouldn't have happened, one which only supports the thought that we never understand what people are feeling, and a lot of the time are unaware that we aren't allowing ourselves to. The audience knows this will be explained since gunshots have the last word in the opening scene, after which we are recoil to an earlier vista of the flow of the community's lives. But even exclusive of the "weeks earlier" title card, it would be challenging to misinterpret the aura of dismay, loss and skulking aggression. We now sensitively operate in shades of gray when watching these people because of what we know will happen to someone at some point for some reason.

Though shot in Nova Scotia, David Gordon Green's fourth film happens in one of those insulated American towns where the seemingly perpetual mood of the sky and the air affects the people with directionless melancholy. A high school student is the axis of these "weeks" whose parents are splitting up. His former baby sitter, played by Kate Beckinsale, now a waitress at the neighborhood Chinese restaurant, has broken up with her husband, Sam Rockwell, whose inconsistent clinch on Christianity seems more like a sign of his vulnerability than a solace for his beleaguered heart.

Beckinsale is sleeping with Nicky Katt, who is married to her friend Amy Sedaris. Rockwell and Beckinsale have a young daughter, who gives the impression of being in life-threatening jeopardy every time she's on screen, particularly when she isn't. The nippy cloud of fate that looms above all of them mutes any melodrama, much to Green's credit, for he drives to separate from the dreary customs of this gloomy, unembellished approach to realism. For example, rather surprisingly, Even when characters are in anguish and against their better judgment, this small town tragedy is recurrently very funny, not in a smooth or sardonic manner, but in the way that life, even at its worst, can be. Rockwell has a definite gift in this department, and his character's self-deprecating lightheartedness grows to be a facet of the sincere buoyancy that seem to ensure ultimate letdown and dissatisfaction.

However, to be realistic, Beckinsale's skill and discipline cannot overcome the sense that she is an exotic species transplanted into this grim ecosystem. She delivers an intense performance, as close as she comes to convincing us, but it's an uncharacteristic stretch to suppose that a woman with the sort of dignified security in her own attractiveness she exhibits would end up with a rather dense underachiever like Rockwell's character. To some extent more convincing is the lovable, youthful romance that bounds between the high school boy and a nerdy girl.

For a movie that only opened to two theaters on its opening weekend, Snow Angels is another film by Green that stands somewhat isolated as a poetic trace of the seemingly doomed life force of youth with an eye for the unplanned assets and deep idiosyncrasies of location and situation.