White Bird in a Blizzard | Little White Lies

White Bird in a Blizzard

05 Mar 2015 / Released: 06 Mar 2015

A woman wearing a green halter-neck swimsuit and sunglasses, sitting on a lounger by a pool with a drink on a table beside her.
A woman wearing a green halter-neck swimsuit and sunglasses, sitting on a lounger by a pool with a drink on a table beside her.
3

Anticipation.

An intriguing cast, a compelling premise.

3

Enjoyment.

Madwomen in the attic.

3

In Retrospect.

An absorbing portrait of a woman, Gregg Araki continues to play exquisite corpse with film form.

Mad­ness, ado­les­cence and nos­tal­gia colour Gregg Arak­i’s poet­ic mys­tery star­ring Shai­lene Woodley.

In a nos­tal­gia dri­ven com­ing-of-age tale that drips with all the sub­ur­ban por­tent of a Gre­go­ry Crewd­son pho­to­graph, Kat (Shai­lene Wood­ley) nar­rates the events sur­round­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of her unbal­anced moth­er, Eve (Eva Green).

Based on the nov­el by Amer­i­can fic­tion writer Lau­ra Kasis­chke, White Bird in a Bliz­zard is a poet­ic mys­tery, deeply entrenched in an 80s aes­thet­ic, boast­ing a sonorous sound­track by the Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie and superla­tive cin­e­matog­ra­phy which takes its form in a series of sim­ple sub­ur­ban tableaux pop­u­lat­ed by boys-next-door, day-glo cos­tumes and soul­less shop­ping malls.

But if this sounds like typ­i­cal Ara­ki fare you’ll quick­ly find your­self far from the nar­ra­tive­ly uncon­ven­tion­al and provoca­tive queer dra­mas of yore. White Bird isn’t retread­ing the sub­cul­tur­al kalei­do­scope of the Teen Apoc­a­lypse Tril­o­gy, instead mak­ing new ground with a num­ber of almost coy lit­er­ary left hooks.

In one of many nar­rat­ed epipha­nies, Kat pith­ily states one of the film’s cen­tral con­tentions: I felt like an actress, play­ing myself. A bad actress doing a shit­ty job.” All the char­ac­ters in White Bird wres­tle with their pre­des­tined roles, per­form­ing them ade­quate­ly at times but nev­er quite ful­fill­ing them to theirs or any­one else’s satisfaction.

The act­ing is fine, but often point­ed­ly off-kil­ter, as vary­ing styles sit uncom­fort­ably astride one anoth­er, with more straight-laced turns com­ing from Christo­pher Mel­oni (as Kat’s father) and Wood­ley, while Eva Green’s snarling­ly over­wrought exe­cu­tion evokes Joan Craw­ford-esque Old Hol­ly­wood grande dames. Eve is a lurch­ing, unhap­py, embit­tered drunk­ard, pin­ing for lost youth. For her, the elab­o­rate­ly staged Amer­i­cana quick­ly became blood­less and entrap­ping. Domes­tic­i­ty is emp­ty, repet­i­tive and loveless.

Even in Eve’s absence, White Bird harks back to film and literature’s fore­bod­ing first wives and dis­ap­peared women. A cameo by Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks’ Lau­ra Palmer) feels appo­site, but even sans this obvi­ous cul­tur­al hat-tip, Eve’s lega­cy looms large in the Con­nor house­hold like The First Mrs de Win­ter in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebec­ca’ or Antoinet­ta Mason, the orig­i­nal mad­woman in the attic’ from Jane Eyre’. Dia­logue and scenes con­tin­u­ous­ly allude and drop clues to this: some­times I thought… she was going to burn the house down.” But Eve doesn’t get to dance on the fiery balustrades of Thorn­ton Hall, she mere­ly disappears.

Stand­ing on the thresh­old of adult­hood, beyond increas­ing­ly impul­sive actions and a grow­ing nihilis­tic streak, Kat seems out­ward­ly untouched by her mother’s unex­plained dis­ap­pear­ance. She wants to know where she’s gone, but not to the extent that it’s going to alter her social and sex­u­al pri­or­i­ties. But beneath the ado­les­cent insou­ciance, she’s plagued by haunt­ing dreams where she search­es for Eve in a snow­storm. Her ther­a­pist dis­miss­es them – some­times dreams are just dreams.” But in direc­tor Gregg Araki’s world, dreams are nev­er just that, and as the title sug­gests, view­ers will instead have to search hard for hid­den clues.

You might like