If—like the Beatles surreally imagined—happiness is a warm gun, writer-director David Gordon Green's (Undertow, 2004) misleadingly titled, adult-themed Snow Angels makes a case for an alternately depressant dose of reality. Starring Kate Beckinsale (Annie) and Sam Rockwell (Glenn), the fairish melodrama is a downer tale, based on Stewart O’Nan’s 1994 novel of the same name, which follows the emotional fallout from an All-American working-class family, and the surrounding community, crumbling apart due to failed dreams, lost loves, and inabilities to cope.
Maximizing its $1.5 million budget with the canny choice to tailor itself as a character-driven piece, the movie takes place during wintertime in an unnamed town (shot in Nova Scotia, Canada). Cold-bloodedness of one form or another permeates—indoors and out. Unforgiving frozen snow blankets the ground throughout, with much of the goings-on taking place in front yards, parking lots, and a high school football field. Because it’s always icy and raw, the added clothing coverings paradoxically reveal layers and colors about individual characters; who they want to be and who they really are.
This is a blue-collar community. The kind of town where folks drive around with dogs in the back of their pickup beds, say grace when preparing to eat lunch at the mall food court, and look forward to casseroles for supper before sundown.
When we meet Annie and Glenn, they’ve already separated. Glenn drops by for scheduled visits with the couple’s four-year-old daughter, Tara. Annie is a waitress at a Chinese restaurant. The bearded Glenn, intermittently employed, recently hired on at a local carpet warehouse. This wasn’t a mutually agreed upon breakup. Even so, they're are no winners; both Annie and Glenn have broken hearts. Where things went wrong we’re not quite sure.
We get enough to know that Glenn is a lovable screw-up that won’t—can’t—let go of Annie. (“I don’t care what the judge said. I’m not a dangerous person”). He’s so fragile that when Annie originally left him he drove his car off a 100-foot-high bridge. On purpose. He failed even at suicide. In his mind, he learned from the temporary loss of sanity, for now he’s a born-again Christian. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Annie is trying to move on, although how well she’s succeeding is debatable. She’s having an affair with Nate (Nicky Katt), the husband of her best friend and coworker, Barb (Amy Sedaris). The adulterers rendezvous at a middling motel called the Stardust. If only.
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