Quiet village

>> David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels is
small masterpiece of low-key storytelling

by MARK SLUTSKY

A small-town ensemble drama built on interweaving characters and relationships, broken marriages, heartbreak, new love and sudden tragedy, Snow Angels might not sound exciting on paper; it might sound like a bad Canadian indie drama. The unfortunate and winsome title doesn’t help. But this little movie is something special.

The film is directed by David Gordon Green, best known for George Washington and (the amazing) All the Real Girls, as well as, improbably, the upcoming Seth Rogen stoner adventure The Pineapple Express, and it once again shows his deft handling of character and quiet storytelling.

Gordon Green has always been a great director of actors and he has such a good cast here: Sam Rockwell, Griffin Dunne, Nicky Katt, Kate Beckinsale, Amy Sedaris as well as some very talented other names you probably don’t know. Based on the novel by Stewart O’Nan, Snow Angels is set in a little American town (I think at some point someone mentions it being in upstate New York, though the movie was actually shot in Halifax), and follows the lives of several intersecting characters.

Michael Angarano plays Arthur, a teenage kid whose parents (Dunne and Jeanetta Arnette) have just separated. He’s hanging out with a new girl at school, Lily (Leah Ostry), and their gentle courtship is one of the movie’s real pleasures.

Working at China Town, a local Chinese restaurant, he banters with co-worker Barb (Sedaris) and flirts with Annie (Beckinsale). She’s sleeping with Sedaris’s husband (Katt) and not too long separated from her own spouse (Rockwell). Rockwell’s character, so tragic, is a great creation: a congenital fuck-up, suicide attempt survivor and born-again Christian.

All the grown-ups in this movie are flawed in some way, but Gordon Green’s direction never feels judgmental, and crucially, the drama never feels heavy-handed, even when it gets very heavy. The movie has the same lightness of All the Real Girls. Characters flirt, goof off, seem real. It would be hard to choose a standout: Rockwell is amazing, but so is Beckinsale, who has none of her usual coldness. And Angarano, who I’d never heard of before, is low-key, charming and perfect. This isn’t a big movie, but it’s a small, gentle masterpiece. Don’t sleep on it.

Snow Angels opens this
Friday, March 28

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