ALL THE REAL GIRLS
# stars based on 4 stars: 3 Reviewed by: Harvey Karten Sony Pictures Classics Directed by: David Gordon Green Written by: David Gordon Green, Paul Schneider Cast: Zooey Deschanel, Patricia Clarkson, Benjamin Mouton, Maurice Coompte, Danny McBride, Shea Wingham Screened at: SONY, NYC, 2/10/03
A former neighbor of mine in our building overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge is an urban woman if ever there was one. Talkative and opinionated, she often cooked meals for those confined to their apartments and drove folks to medical appointments when they had no one in their own families to do so. She inexplicably picked up and moved to a private house in a rural area of North Carolina just far enough from a college town to make such a trip a chore. Who can figure what makes people tick? The southern part of the nation may be appealing to big city folks if you're talking New Orleans, but what can a town with a population of 858 offer to an ex New Yorker?
Not much, according to David Gordon Green, whose portrait of a North Carolina mill town finds the young men hanging out around junk yards and fiddling with their old cars or quaffing brew in a bar that's not likely to book a performance with Dolly Parton. The folks around these parts are under-educated and lacking in dreams, but one twenty-two year old, Paul (Paul Schneider), boasts sleeping with twenty-six women, though he's the sort who'd probably swear to the one girl he really likes that "they didn't mean a thing to him."
And that's more or less what Paul 'fesses up to when he meets Noel (Zooey Deschanel), just in from a spell at a boarding school, who will probably never go further in her education but whose life turns around when she meets Paul. Not so eager to further the relationship is Tip (Shea Wingham), Noel's sister, who is quite aware of Paul's reputation and wants no part of his influence for his kid sib. Little does Tip know that Paul has finally met someone he has no urge to take advantage of, actually shy in the presence of a virgin.
From the director whose "George Washington" was a hit of the festival circuit, David Gordon Green's new feature could confirm the belief that towns like this one are simply places to pass through if you're taking the scenic route from New York to Miami Beach. From the way he portrays these twenty-somethings, who probably could not begin to imagine the youth scene at New York's Odeon, there just may be something about the place that keeps them there, perhaps their immaturity: after all Paul's own mother, Elvira (Patricia Clarkson), slaps the kid twice, exasperated by his irresponsible ways.
Though the conclusion is open-ended, we do get to care about Paul, though maybe not as much as does his major squeeze Noel. In a tale that's awfully slow-moving, the major reason to see the movie is Zooey Deschanel, my vote for best supporting actress as Cheryl in Miguel Arteta's "The Good Girl." In that pic, Deschanel is the heavily made-up, sardonic and creative announcer of sales at the Rodeo supermarket's microphone and while I'd prefer to see her in similar guises, she turns in an impressive performance as an excitable woman frustrated at the puerile nature of her first love.
Rated R. 108 minutes. Copyright 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
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