snow angels (2007)

The first two David Gordon Green films (2000’s George Washington and 2003’s All the Real Girls) are rather impressive, quietly affecting works that most of his subsequent films are somewhat destined to suffer by way of comparison. It definitely applies to something like Snow Angels – a modest but not particularly well-made film, in which the peculiarities in Green’s often mesmerizing observational filmmaking style barely registers. I wanted to read the Stewart O’Nan novel from which the film is adapted from before writing this – yes, I had wanted to figure whether Green’s first attempt at literary adaptation was somehow botched or was the source novel inherently flawed – but never got around to it. (Instead, I’m wallowing in prime Philip Larkin.) Also, watching Snow Angels, I never really cared about the ill-fated circumstances surrounding the grown-up coupling of the Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale characters; instead, I would have much preferred Green to focus his attention more on refining the first bloom of romantic attraction between two reserved high-school students (capably played by Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby), who drifts in and out of the narrative like two characters in search of a country song.