A North Carolina textile mill town provides the backdrop for this love story, with a slice of small town life on the side. In the opening scene, Paul and Noel move tentatively into the unexplored territory of first, best, love. Eighteen year-old Noel, back in town after graduating from her all-girls boarding school, wonders why Paul, a few years older, doesn't kiss her. He tries to explain that he's afraid of turning what he feels for her into the same thing he's had with plenty of other girls. One barrier is Noel's brother, Tip, who happens to be Paul's best friend. He's all too aware of Paul's one-night-stand history with girls. The bumpy road of confusing emotions they all feel forms the hub of this winning and real drama.
Co-written by director David Gordon Green (George Washington) and lead actor Paul Schneider, the dialog is so authentic at times it's almost eerie. Green, who has a good eye and the good sense to linger over the images, allows the ambiguities of life to liquefy, gel, and liquefy again. The landscape, both the lush mountainous region and the emotional territory of its inhabitants, plays somewhat like another character. A sparkling riverbed, a foggy mountaintop meeting a golden sunset, and the sturdy countryside, are the places and spaces for reflection. The film lets us stay long enough in this town to get a real feel for the place instead of just driving through. Looking like countless small towns one passes on the highway, with its auto grave yard and small downtown strip on the river, this time we get to know those guys out back working on the beaters and the kids whose hang out is the great outdoors.
Paul (Paul Schneider), with his Gomer-like twang and charm, lives with his mom (Patricia Clarkson, Far From Heaven). She makes a living entertaining on the hospital pediatric ward as a clown. She'd like Paul to act his age a little more and they occasionally tangle but care deeply for one another. Zooey Deschanel (Almost Famous) gives a touchingly incisive performance as the guileless Noel, uncertain of the future and with some painful memories she can't forget and would like to share. With an uncommon naturalness about her, she is reminiscent of a young Debra Winger in looks and vocal quality. As she and Paul teeter on the brink of physical intimacy, other forces bear down on the complicated processes of life and relationships. Their conversations seem so authentic that they carry an improvisational tone.
With Paul and Noel at the core of the narrative, the true strength of the film is its ability to capture the shading in the ensemble of characters. As it bounces around among the inhabitants, each viewpoint becomes more understandable, even as that perspective shifts. Sometimes the places of understanding intersect, sometimes not. The two-legged dog walking through a yard seems to simply belong, or perhaps was put there to underscore Paul's comment about mistakes of nature. I'd like to think of him as the former. The weakness is perhaps a bit too much waxing philosophical at times, but that may be a reflection of the times we live in. Trying to articulate difficult conceptual emotions has replaced the repression that permeated an earlier world, the one of Far From Heaven. Nevertheless, there is timelessness about it, and the rural industrial setting, which could place it in any of the past few decades.
The most authentic of these characters move seamlessly on their way. One of these is Bust Ass (Danny McBride), a guy so real you swear you remember him from high school. The reflective beauty of the North Carolina surroundings echoes interior reflections on paths not taken, first loves, and yearning hearts. At times it recalls Diner, and even a soft echo of Affliction, with suggestions of alcoholism among the inhabitants. There is the nuanced quality about the screenplay of some of the best southern writers. Green and the rest of the team, many of who worked on George Washington, follow up the success of that film with another winner.
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