I just don't want to go to college and have it be, like, you know, four years of writing bad girl-poetry and listening to drum circles.--Noel, All the Real Girls
Ever watch a movie that you want to like--expect to like--only to find yourself incapable of caring all that much once it unspools in front of you? [It's so much more crushing than having, say, diminished expectations confirmed because, at least in those cases, you're usually seeing a movie as a concession to someone else, and what's more fun than saying, "I told you so," really?]
Which is a roundabout way of saying that I watched David Gordon Green's second feature, All the Real Girls, tonight, and it was just sort of ehhh. Zooey Deschanel and Patricia Clarkson are in it, stellar as always. But that just means you can imagine how much worse it could have been without them.
I haven't seen Green's acclaimed debut George Washington yet, but it's already part of the Criterion Collection, a vote of confidence I tend to trust. And maybe that one is good, and maybe one day I'll watch it, but it won't be soon.
Don't get me wrong. There's some truly amazing cinematography afoot, and I wasn't bothered by the languorous pacing, either. But if you're able to come by the DVD without any monetary outlay on your part, here's a tip. Just watch chapter 8, "Clowning in the children's ward." I'll set it up for you.
Patricia Clarkson, playing Elvira, works as a Pippy Longstocking-coiffed clown in the children's ward of a hospital. Her partner is sick, so she presses her hapless 22-year-old son Paul [Paul Schneider] to step in. He agrees, reluctantly, only after being badgered. There's a shot of the two of them, sullen in face paint, in the car, then the camera jumps to the children's ward. Quick shots saturated with off colors cut between the children's colorful drawings of themselves, the actual kids--one or two at a time--in close up, and long shots showing Elvira and Paul dancing around the room under the watchful eye of some sort of orderly or nurse.
The only way I can describe the music is to ask you to imagine one of those street percussionist kids. You know, the kid pounding out a beat on pots and pans and plastic buckets that's so insidious you find yourself unconsciously walking in 4-4 time. Now imagine he's gotten hold somehow of a steel drum and some brushes. There's a sussuration anchored by a bottom-heavy hint of a bell. And it's insistent.
Elvira and Paul dance in time with this spidery yet chiming beat, even though the music itself can't possibly be completely diegetic. [It'd be a strange choice for a sick kids' party.] Their moves are spastic but oddly contagious, to the point where the orderly can no longer resist the siren song of Terpsichore and flings himself from his chair to present a wild choreography of his own--to the delight of the dancing kids. [Think of the hypnotic grace of the nun-chuk redneck in Ghost World. That's the idea.]
The whole sequence lasts only a few minutes, and Zooey Deschanel, the strongest performer in the movie, isn't even in it. But it's the only thing I'll take away. It's gorgeous, and weird, and something new.
Post-script: When I looked up David Gordon Green, I discovered his current project is--I can barely bring myself to type it--Confederacy of Dunces, starring Will Ferrell as Ignatius. Here's hoping it's Ferrell's Razor's Edge; the 'Fesser and I are still disappointed that the rumors of Philip Seymour Hoffman as the lead weren't true.
