Film Review - White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)

Genre:
Drama, Mystery
Distributor:
Altitude Film Entertainment
Release Date:
6th March 2015 (UK Cinema)
16th March 2015 (UK DVD)
Rating: 15
Director:
Greg Araki
Cast:
Shailene Woodley, eva green, Christopher Meloni, Thomas Jane, Gabourey Sidibe, shiloh fernandez, Angela Bassett
Buy:White Bird In A Blizzard [DVD]
Gregg Araki is a director who I have a love it/hate it thing with. He started out being one of the founders of “New Queer Cinema” of the ‘90s, making these bisexual teen comedies that have great soundtracks full of shoegaze goodness, with a slightly trippy nature. However his greatest flaw was always the film’s ending, they always seemed rushed or haphazard.

Things changed when he made the out and out masterpiece Mysterious Skin starring a very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was strange, surreal, daring, and finally had an ending that was totally satisfying. He followed it up with the more conventional Smiley, and the enjoyable but deeply flawed attempt to get back to his earlier films Kaboom. This brings us up to his latest film White Bird in a Blizzard.

White Bird in a Blizzard is by far the closest in tone to his undisputed masterpiece Mysterious Skin. Both are mysteries based on novels, which might be why both films have a satisfying beginning, middle and end. It’s about a teenage girl Katrina Connors (Shailene Woodley) whose “perfect” suburban housewife mother, simply disappears one day and is never seen again. The rest of the film is her coming of age and dealing with the disappearance.

The tone of the film is a mixture of Sirkian melodrama and David Lynch strangeness. The lead performance by Shailene Woodley is attempting to channel Winona Ryder circa Heathers, but as my girlfriend said it was more shoegaze Lindsay Lohan which is not necessarily a problem. Eva Green goes full Mommie Dearest as the mother and is one of the best performances she has ever given. To add to the Lynchian connection, Sheryl Lee plays the father’s new girlfriend and it took me two viewings to recognize her.

I have to admit I had pretty much given up on Gregg Araki after Kaboom, coming to the conclusion he will never get back to the filmmaking of Mysterious Skin. I was pleasantly surprised with what he did with White Bird in a Blizzard. It has a twist you won’t see coming from a mile away, and an absolutely fantastic 80s soundtrack full of New Order, Cocteau Twin, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Psychedelic Furs, Echo & the Bunnymen and The Cure among many others.

★★★★
Ian Schultz

Greg Araki's Nowhere (1997) DVD Review

Rating: 18
DVD Release Date: 26th August 2013 (UK)
Director: Gregg Araki
Cast: James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton, Christina Applegate
Buy: Nowhere [DVD]
When I watched the daring and beautiful Mysterious Skin some five years ago, Gregg Araki topped my list of filmmakers to further explore. At that time, though, the rest of his oeuvre was not available on DVD in the UK so I put my interest on the back burner. In the years since, my interest in Araki’s films had dramatically subsided having heard and read on numerous occasions that his other films were, quite frankly, not worth bothering with. However, having recently developed an interest in the New Queer Cinema movement (and after recently watching The Living End, his seminal, yet flawed, contribution to that movement) my interest in Araki’s films was rekindled. So, when the opportunity arose to review Second Sight’s release of Nowhere, I jumped at the chance.

With a stellar cast of, what were at the time, up and coming stars including James Duval, Chiara Mastroianni, Christina Applegate, Ryan Phillippe, Heather Graham, Scott Caan, Mena Suvari, Shannen Doherty, Rose McGowan, and Jordan Ladd, Nowhere is the final instalment in Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy following Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation (fortunately, as I have seen neither, the films only share a common theme).

Envisioning a nihilistic future world, the film offers up a surreal, apocalyptical vision of Los Angeles that is both hedonistic and decadent. At the centre of the film is the existential Dark Smith (Duval) who is tormented by his girlfriend’s (Rachel True) polygamous nature. Over the course of a day, we follow Dark and an array of his eccentric friends as they confront issues ranging from drug addiction and eating disorders through to alien abduction. Hell, by the end of the film we witness Dark’s not-gay, gay new soul mate’s absurd transformation into a cockroach like alien.

As well as the absurdities surrounding alien abduction, Araki also likes to throw in some over the top violence and a scene in which one of the characters is raped by a Baywatch star. All the over the top irreverence goes nowhere, rather ironic given the film’s title, and the film lacks any of the political punch that was served up in The Living End. It would seem that the reservations held by those who have warned me about Araki are true. What the film does have going for it, though, is a visual style that owes much to Godard and a punk aesthetic reminiscent of Derek Jarman’s Jubilee.

★★☆☆☆

Shane James