I was just in China, and while there my girlfriend and I were staying at a hostel in Beijing that had a big TV and movie collection in the common room. One afternoon we watched "Lars and the Real Girl" with Ryan Gosling.
It was pretty good, and while we were watching I told Katie that the title reminded me of this other movie I had seen a few years ago, called "All the Real Girls," which I really liked.
That's about as far as the conversation went. A few days later we arrived back in Toronto on a Saturday night, pretty jet-lagged due to the 12-hour time difference.
I couldn't sleep and and ended up staying up most of the night. Well, at something like 2 a.m., I turned on the TV and "All The Real Girls" was playing on TVO.
Such a strange coincidence to see this little indie flick that almost no one has seen, just a couple of days after talking about it probably for the first time since I watched it back in 2004. AND, making things even more spooky, the lead character in ATRG is Paul Schneider, who ALSO played Lars' brother in LATRG. Oh man.
But anyway, the point in, the movie is pretty brilliant and I thought I'd write a few words about it.
As mentioned, "All the Real Girls" stars Paul Schneider as Paul, a young man, maybe in his early twenties, with a reputation as a womanizer in the small North Carolina mountain town that he grew up in and has never really left.
The lovely Zooey Deschanel ('The Go-Getter,''Yes Man') is Noel, the sister of Paul's best friend who is from the same town but has spent most of her life attending boarding school.
The short version is that she comes home, meets Paul and they quickly fall in love in one of those unexpected, implausible romances that sweeps both participants off their feet and leaves them gasping for air. Just before, of course, it all comes crashing down.
While Schneider may not be all that believable as a womanizer (picture frumpy hair and plaid insulated work shirts), the story and the film's portrayal of small-town, rural life as well as the crushing impact of a first true love, are right on.
When Paul meets Noel he is completely smitten and decides he wants to try and do things differently this time. He knows his other relationships with women were shallow and meaningless and based entirely on sex, so he decides his best chance of making things work with Noel is to avoid sex altogether.
There's an honest integrity in this attempt, and you sense that Noel represents the kind of rare opportunity that Paul might not see very often in his dead-end, economically depressed town.
It seems to work, and the chemistry and connection build between them in a way that is really tangible and real for any viewer who has experienced something like that.
Paul is convincing as the tough small-towner who dreams of something bigger and better, but is honest enough to acknowledge that his friends, family his life and living are all rooted in that town, and so is he.
Noel, beautiful and alive and different from anything he knows, is the light that shines through into his sheltered life and gives him hope that his dreams might not be unreasonable.
But just as their love is powerful, quick and unexpected, it is also fleeting and fragile, and the film's portrayal of the fast collapse of their bond is also accurate and honest, and even a little painful to watch at times.
In one scene, after Paul realizes things are breaking down, completely beyond his control, he simply pounds his fist into the ground in pain and frustration, unable to express his heartbreak in any other way. The scene, which could have easily been cheesy and forgettable, is handled in a way that makes it searing and real -- one of the moments I remembered vividly from the first time I watched it.
Woven through the film are small snapshots of conversations between the characters, each of them struggling with their own set of issues. One has gotten his girlfriend pregnant, another wrestles with his relationship with his longtime girlfriend and questions what to do. These vignettes form a sort of photo album of a small town, and if you grew up in one, like I did, these snapshots resonate.
The film's tagline, according to IMDB, is "Love is a puzzle. These are the pieces." And I think that fits pretty well. Everyone in the film is working out, in some form and some fashion, what love looks like for them, and the end result is the beautiful telling of a real love story that many people know first hand and can connect with.
ATRG is slow and a little sleepy, like the town where the film is set, and it doesn't break a ton of new ground, but it works really well and I recommend it -- unless that's just the jet lag talking...
(Oddly, it also stars Danny McBride, who plays the 2nd pot dealer in "Pineapple Express," and a crewmember in "Tropic Thunder," the ballplayer in "Eastbound and Down" and is also in "Superbad," "Hotrod" and a ton of other recent films.)
