All the Real Girls (2003)

Pretty Good

As Good As It Gets

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

If George Washington didn't cement the notion that David Gordon Green was an ambitious, careful new writer-director, his sophomore film All the Real Girls should do the honors. Here is a soft, warm, and often frighteningly realistic portrayal of a young relationship in the south, burdened by pasts no one wants to talk about and futures no one is really sure of. This is yet another film where Green magnifies tight-knit relationships in seemingly desolate communities.The film stars Paul Schneider and Zooey Deschannel (who, with short hair in later scenes, looks strikingly like actress Greta Gerwig) as Paul and Noel. Paul lives with his mother, who works as a clown at children's hospitals, and has a reputation for being a womanizer who shies away from long-term relationships. Noel is a more mature, if quirkier, young woman and the two hit it off when they first meet. Paul hangs around with a group of guys, one of whom is played by Danny McBride, and loves to have vulgar, immature dialogs. But when he hangs with Noel, he has much more intimate, mature conversations, as they see eye-to-eye on much more than they'd believe.What unfolds is a truly beautiful relationship, one where the idea of sex crosses the mind but isn't directly acted upon. This is because Paul genuinely cares about Noel's feelings, and because of this, acts in a more restrained, conservative manner. If he didn't feel so attached to her, he would've easily had sex with her a few days after knowing her and perhaps add her to the laundry list of girls he slept with in a week or so. But he becomes so close with her that it frightens him, and makes him think about how his life my change with this woman.This story wouldn't have worked half as well with lesser screen presences. Schneider and Deschannel provide leverage emotionally and narratively that wouldn't exist if the shoes of Paul and Noel were filled by performances more driven by beauty and a script more concerned with petty mawkishness. I constantly see young girls - and older ones, too - flock towards the latest film adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels, with incredulous romances, trite instances, and utterly lame characters. The harmful effect with those films are they provide audiences, particularly females with the idea that relationships like this actually exist and picturesque beauty is a commonality in the deepest of relationships. I would recommend the same crowd All the Real Girls if I knew my recommendation wouldn't be instantly discarded when they realizes how independent, subtle, and serene the film actually is.The glue holding the film together is the score, which combines that kind of rare beauty in certain instances that would seem trivial if they weren't made noteworthy in some way. The score livens common events in the characters' lives like talking, cuddling, walking, or simple scenic shots of the south. The cinematography is done by Tim Orr, the same man who made the dreary, urban landscape of North Carolina a character in Green's George Washington. Needless to say, after providing that film with such incomparable beauty, his work here is equally impressive.All the Real Girls doesn't blind the viewer with potency in symbolism and subtlety like that film, but it makes for just as engaging of a viewing. It offers a study on a believable relationships that one is hardpressed to find in other romantic films. Just like most independent films, it isn't complete unless there are a few questionable instances, and one in particular, I can see angering viewers. It's so odd and undeveloped that it leaves a bit of a pungent aftertaste after seeing such a deep, intimate picture. But that's film.Starring: Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, and Danny McBride. Directed by: David Gordon Green.

Nothing grates quite so much as a "realistic" film that contains practically no realism at all.To its credit, "All the Real Girls" really *tries* to be true-to-life. But the dialog and performances don't convince. Characters in this film are constantly doing and saying quirky, bizarre things that real people never do or say.For example, in one of many strange "romantic" scenes, the female lead says to her boyfriend: "I had a dream last night that you were growing a garden on a trampoline. And I was so happy that I invented peanut butter." So, what are we to make of this bizarre nugget of dialog? Is it "sentimental"? Is it "deep"? And is it the kind of thing that I would say on a date? (I'll answer the last question for you -- "no.") It's none of those things, it's just ridiculous ... the product of a strange, artificial mode of speech peculiar to American art-house movies.In another weird moment, our romantic leads are standing in an inexplicably deserted bowling alley (did they break in after hours?) The guy says to his girlfriend something like, "I wanna dance, but I don't want you to watch me. Turn around." So she turns around. And then he dances like a doofus. Do even goofy teenagers behave like this on dates? And am I really supposed to believe that this awkward-as-anything guy is a ladies' man, as we are repeatedly told (but not actually shown)? Other exciting scenes involve a lengthy discussion of what's better to eat for breakfast, pancakes or eggs; a woman in a clown costume declaring something like "I used to be beautiful, but now I am this clown"; and a scuffle in which an unimportant character gets beaten severely and choked, and is then totally forgotten about by all the other characters, the director, and the screenwriter. One of many strange lapses in a film of lapses.So, if your idea of a good time is to spend almost two hours in indie movie hell, watching a non-plot crawl along at the pace of a half-dead snail, while two superficial and thinly drawn characters alternate between flirting ridiculously and exchanging depressing anecdotes on their path to falling in a desperately superficial form of love ... well then, this may be the motion picture for you. I, for one, will be watching something like "Smiles of a Summer Night" or "Terror of Mechagodzilla" instead.

It's good every now and then to come across a film like All the Real Girls. Here is a romance which is realistic and virtually free of gimmick and clichés. It is also photographed beautifully, scored beautifully and characterized in a unusual and interesting manner. It is a film that leaves you thinking, but for all its goodness, it still needs a bit of work.In a small town, Paul has a reputation for having sex affairs with all the local girls (twenty- six to be exact). One day, his best friend's sister drives into town for a visit. She and Paul hang out together first as friends but eventually as a strange couple. it looks as if Paul is ready to go strait for the first time, something which is making his friends and family a little suspicious. What is to come?After the first hour, All the Real Girls is close to being a great film, but something goes wrong. I should point out that in addition to a romance, the movie is also a drama, and dramas need a conflict of some sort. Writer/Director David Gordon Green chooses to throw one in to begin the final act, and he does it in an overly forced, abrupt manner. The scenes which follow are not terrible, but they don't quite match the rest of the picture. They are less interesting and more melodramatic. The ending in fact is kind of sad, but it reminds you that this is not an artificial fictional story, this is a movie which delivers a potential real life scenario.Ignoring the mild errors, All the Real Girls is one of the most accomplished romance films I've seen lately, and it's worth watching.

Nothing very much happens in "All the real girls". Life, such as it is in this sleepy American backwater, goes by but very, very slowly. In itself that's just fine; movies don't have to be 'about' anything. This is David Gordon Green's follow-up to his highly acclaimed "George Washington", (which I haven't seen), and on the strength of this film, if he owes a debt to anyone, it's to Terrence Mallick.The central characters are Paul, (a sexy Paul Schneider), and Noel, (an equally sexy Zooey Deschanel), and to say they are pretty vacant is to credit them with an intelligence they don't have. (This is a film where people spout 'profundities' that they get out of books, even if you can't imagine any of them ever picking up a book). He's the unlikely town Romeo and she's the sister of his best friend and we have to presume they are in love.Green wrote the film from a story he and Schneider devised but it feels improvised. The problem is neither Paul or Noel are good company, nor is anyone else. This is an indie American art-movie filled with its own importance, visually striking in that Terrence Mallick way but something of a slog to sit through. I, for one, was glad when it was over.