#49: All The Real Girls (2003) (dir. David Gordon Green)
Quite possibly, my favorite film about relationships ever made, while acknowledging the fact that my love for it is intensely personal. What happens in this film directly happened to me.
My review written nine years ago: “This movie is some kind of miracle. I'm glad it exists in my life and that I can watch it a dozen times and feel all the feelings humanly possible. And Jesus, how hard I cry when Uncle Leland's daughter describes a dream to her father. I cry about four times total. And that dream has nothing to do with the plot but like most things in this movie -- it's just pitch-perfect sublime as a separate moment, lost in time. If you don't love this movie, I understand but I am also sorry. Many people I know shrug it off as twee, quirky or *gasp* Garden State-esque.
Keep in mind that when I was 15/16 and fell in love for the first time, the events depicted in the film happened to me. Granted, with two different objects of affection in real life. But I still truly think that even if they didn't, this would still be in my top 25 favorite movies ever. It's a little bit of an enigma, but still very real and heartfelt in a way that reflects my idea of what relationships can be.
Oh and the shot of that three-legged dog, oh and that montage after the breakup set to my favorite Mogwai song. Oh and the two scenes involving them talking in bed about real shit. The story of her scars, his mom and him as clowns, a Sparklehorse song... this movie pretty much has everything I could possibly want. It's the kind of movie that makes me want to make movies, but if I never do, that's alright. Because this one exists.”
The alternate title of this essay should be, “why does Jim love All the Real Girls so much?” Like the majority of my favorite films (and certainly all of my writing here), I end up making my experiences with watching them all about “me.” This approach may potentially neglect “why” a movie is successful as a work of art that you should make time for. On one hand, I write reviews the same way I would for a LiveJournal entry. It’s not necessarily film criticism, but more of a celebration of how I’ve managed to connect to something meaningful. There was a time when I didn’t that was remotely possible - to connect, to express, to love.
Especially to people. Perhaps if my parents had asked doctors for a neuropsychological evaluation, the diagnosis of ADHD, generalized anxiety and major depressive disorder would’ve emerged a lot sooner. But I think music and film kept me going more than social interactions did. To some degree, this has hampered my romantic relationships or the majority of communication with the outside world. I loved letting a personal experience unfold before my eyes, as listener, viewer, analyzer and “feeler.” Maybe being an active participant in reality wasn’t something that came naturally. Music and movies were my way in to understand not just myself, but all humans.
However, human beings are social creatures, and we want to experience more than the lives of others via visual storytelling. Most of us are likely to feel desire to be close to another, instead of just filling our lives with media. My first experience of overwhelming attraction towards someone (other than the unattainable, talented actresses I’d see in film and TV) was to a person that I would see frequently after school. She was my best friend’s sister.
At the time, it was hard to say “well, this person is my best friend” since honestly, you shouldn’t choose or pick one over the other. As an adult now, I’d say that Dan, Denny, Jason and Nate were all equally my closest friends at the time. But I think Nate was the first because he had a drum set and I had just bought a guitar (rather my dad got me one for my 15th birthday because I was obsessed with Nirvana). Nate’s younger sister (by two years) was always hanging around our practice sessions as we began forming our first band during our freshman year. Not only was she around but she was talking to me, laughing with me and not once did I feel awkward, uncomfortable or anxious.
I used to have a portable cassette recorder that I’d take everywhere I went to document conversations for fear of me forgetting what was said (maybe I should bring that back as I’m getting older). I still remember recording late night conversations with Nate, our friend Bobby and myself one night. Bobby said something once that stood out, “I think you like Nate’s sister and I think she likes you.” He was wrong about the latter which is fine in hindsight. Nate replied with, “Do you like my sister, Jim?!” Of course, I was in complete denial at the time but eventually all my close friends knew. Nevertheless, the desire was never felt mutually, we stayed in the friend zone (which in hindsight, is probably for the best and I can basically watch this movie as an alternate reality version of what could have been). We remained close friends that talked on the phone nearly every night and even passed letters to one another that I might still have to this day. A similar sense of humor and taste in music definitely went a long way at that time.
Cut to seven years later. I can’t recall how my mom and I wound up in Chicago at the Pipers Alley theater one day. We were probably done shopping or sightseeing, and I looked to see what was playing in a newspaper. By this point, I was going to the movie theater nearly every weekend to catch any new release. I would likely call in to review a few titles on Nick Digilio’s WGN Radio show as a regular. I can’t recall how I first heard about All the Real Girls outside of maybe reading a rave review from Roger Ebert. I knew he was a huge fan of the director’s debut, George Washington, which I hadn’t seen.
The moment All the Real Girls had ended, I turned to my mom in tears. I told her that movie might be the best film I’ve seen in a long time. She thought it was “okay.” I know several people who think it’s “okay” or find it eye-rolling. My mom did ask why I was crying, and I said, “well, that’s the story of what happened between Nate’s sister and me, only we never got that close. Watching that movie was like getting to relive that whole memory but it was portrayed in a way that I wish really did happen.” Not only that, but someone else I dated after Nate’s sister, my first true crush, did what occurs in the second act of All the Real Girls. It was combining my earliest feelings and personal experience into one story. Not only that, but the movie was also funny, cute, strange, beautiful and unconventionally told. I ran out of glowing adjectives for what it meant to me then and still means to me now.
Once I started dating in high school, the second person (and arguably my first real girlfriend) that I felt strong desire for I did actually get to call my “girlfriend,” for a while. She got stoned at a party, slept with another guy and then later told me that it made her realize how much she loved me. We were sitting in a park on a swing set when she told me all of this. Needless to say, I was confused and upset. I felt numb. I didn’t yell with anger. The character of Noel that Zooey Deschanel plays in All the Real Girls does the same thing to her boyfriend Paul (Paul Schneider) and I was truly shaking by reliving the emotions I felt several years ago. Not to mention, the very similar setting where the confrontation and breakup scene takes place in the film (it was a park or an open field). Paul does yell and gets quite angry after hearing what Noel did. It felt so surreal, like having an out-of-body experience; director David Gordon Green captured something so specific to me that I thought maybe he had gotten a hold of my journal and adapted it.
I’ve talked about many movies (like Take This Waltz) that did something along the same lines: a filmmaker created a personal story that managed to reflect my life. Remember the scenes that Daniel Miller gets to relive from his actual life in Defending Your Life? That’s what it felt like to me watching All the Real Girls despite not looking or acting at all like our lead character, Paul. Granted, this is still a dramatized version since in real life, we never even kissed. Nate’s sister didn’t really look like Zooey Deschanel either but that didn’t matter. Suddenly, I was smitten with Zooey especially after she cuts her hair short, later in the film. The celebrity crush didn’t last the way others have, thanks to The New Girl and how she became excessively quirky to where SNL had to make a hilarious sketch all about this adorkable quality she seems to exhibit.
In this film, Zooey Deschanel is quite quirky to be sure, but never veers or transforms into a caricature. Noel is the younger sister of small-town layabout Tip (Shea Whigham), who returns home after six years at boarding school. Now 18-years-old, flirtatious and desirable, she immediately catches the eye of Tip’s friends, in particular his best friend Paul (Paul Schneider). Trouble is, Tip knows what Paul is like – a nice guy, but a terrible womanizer (something I also can’t relate to), who has left a chain of broken hearts across the town. Nevertheless, Paul and Noel find a strong connection they have not felt with anyone (showcased in the opening scene); a cautious relationship begins. They experience a kind of love they’ve been hoping for - not about instant gratification, but a reciprocated need to be closer than close.
Where this movie excels is creating a poetic, dreamy mood that is often reduced to simply being Malick-esque. There are moments like that, without question. I think of specifically the montage sequence after they break up and Paul is staring at himself in the bathroom mirror (accompanied by a Mogwai track no less). The filmmaker also captures a sublime, yet grounded representation of regular people leading everyday lives and coping with fluctuating, conflicting emotions. They struggle to understand how to express and process their emotions, which is definitely true of being in high school, but for some of us, remains a problem throughout adulthood.
I can say without a doubt, that sharing everything that’s on my mind even with the person I feel closest to, will likely remain a challenge mainly due to anxiety. I just worry I will say or do the wrong thing and make things awkward. Relationships are always going to be a struggle - ones with family, ones with friends, ones with co-workers, ones with partners. All The Real Girls feel like an encapsulation of that struggle to fully communicate or come to terms with being emotionally conflicted and inconsistent.
At first viewing, I wasn’t sure what to make of the character of Paul. In some ways, it was a similar feeling I got with Barry Egan in Punch-Drunk Love. I don’t want to immediately use an umbrella phrase that’s overused these days, but in both cases, I think it’s apt. Paul and Barry, to me, are “on the spectrum.” Perhaps “neurodivergent” is the more acceptable terminology to use. They’re not good communicators, they struggle with social graces and constantly have trouble managing their feelings, whether they’re good or bad. Paul Schneider’s character is meant to be reflective of his own personal experiences. This was more of a collaborative effort of recollection from both Paul and director David Gordon Green. They don’t paint men in a very positive light throughout this movie, but they’re not demonized either. They admit that they’re awful at times, slowly trying to learn from mistakes made.
There are other relationships too – Paul still lives with his mother (Patricia Clarkson) who works as an entertainment clown for children’s parties, and while Green doesn’t tell us too much about her, life has clearly dealt her some bad cards. Paul’s friendship with Tip also reveals another side of his character, and just as Paul is suddenly made to grow up when he finds a girl he actually cares for, so Tip is forced to do some serious thinking when he learns that his casual girlfriend is pregnant. Not to mention Uncle Leland whose young daughter recalls a dream at one point, that brings me to tears.
Green nurtures affections as if they were a tender sapling under threat of being bruised and buffeted by the real world. And, of course, they are. Paul and Noel don't rush into having sex because Paul doesn't want to treat Noel (who is a virgin) as if she were just any other girl. There's an age-old term for the feelings that ultimately rock Paul's world -- file them under "madonna/whore complex" -- but Green treats them as if they were a revelation of our modern world that somehow, like the latest dance craze, just reached Smalltown USA. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. There are no new stories, only new ways of telling the old ones, and it's every young filmmaker's right to take a shot. He does attempt to treat this burgeoning romance with grace and delicacy. In an early scene, as Paul and Noel are just getting started, we see them huddled in the shadows, quietly trading secrets after a nighttime date. Paul kisses the palm of Noel's hand, a deeply romantic gesture and one whose erotic potential is largely underrated. In that first sequence Green does a great job of showing us their fragile, wobbly-kneed intimacy -- it's like a spring lamb -- and makes us wonder where on earth he's going to take us next - Stephanie Zacharek
Lisa Schwartzbaum described this film beautifully as well with, “Scene A doesn’t snap into Scene B like a jigsaw-puzzle piece, but Scenes A through G somehow shimmer together with the depth of truth.” Also, Ebert sums up what this movie examines poignantly too with, “The thing about real love is, if you lose it, you can also lose your ability to believe in it, and that hurts even more. Especially in a town where real love may be the only world-class thing that ever happens.” I pieced these quotes together the way that Green creates his stream-of-consciousness scenes, they sort of spring to mind unexpectedly, giving a lot of this movie a messy, improvisatory feel. Especially since you have a character like Bust-Ass played by Danny McBride (talk about another actor whose persona turned into a caricature of sorts). It’s also a very funny movie at times with moments that I’ll forever remember as making me laugh hard. The bizarre clown dance, Bust-Ass trying to get Noel to say that we should sleep with him, the list goes on.
One thing that stuck with me is a favorite line of dialogue when we see our star-crossed lovers hanging out together, sharing dreams, memories, thoughts and even farts. Noel tells Paul that she “had a dream she grew a garden on a trampoline and was so happy that she invented peanut butter.” Don’t ask me why I laugh and love that line so much. Not to mention the fact that there are just random absurdist asides throughout where characters just say things that often don’t make any sense. But another striking moment that contains Zooey Deschanel’s best acting ever is when Noel reveals the origins of the scars on her stomach to Paul when they stay in a hotel room one night. This movie somehow manages to find such heartbreaking ways to enhance character depth and that scene is just one of many examples. Even a character like Tip (the remarkably talented Shea Whigham) has a monologue late in the film in which he opens up about his fears of becoming a father.
I certainly had seen movies like this before especially in terms of the story its actually telling. First love, coming-of-age, isolation in a small town, falling in love with someone that they shouldn’t love, the heartbreaking break-up. But besides my shout-out to Terrence Malick, at the time, I’m not sure if I had seen it done this way that spoke to me directly. The humor, the lived-in experiences I already had even if I was only in my 20s, the needle drops, the cinematography, every single thing about it lead me to say at the time, “this is everything I could ever want from a movie about falling in love.” Watching it now, I am still in the same mindset. It’s not nostalgia playing a role, it is a sincere love of what David Gordon Green did early in his career. I even thought at the time, well, maybe Green is up there with Paul Thomas Anderson as a filmmaker I’ll likely end up loving everything he does.
Sadly, this was not the case especially once we get to something like Your Highness. Don’t get me wrong, Green’s career devolved especially once he delved into the world of horror sequels for a particular franchise, but it’s a fascinating ride with highs and lows. There was even a bit of a comeback when he did Manglehorn and Joe, at least for me. Still, nothing reaches the highs of the films he made in succession: George Washington, All The Real Girls, Undertow, Snow Angels. His most successful film followed Snow Angels which sent him down the comedy path and I’ll admit to still having a soft spot for the ridiculousness of Pineapple Express. But we need Green to go back to his roots that made his first four films among the very best, particularly the one that I hold near and dear. We need more vulnerability in cinema and this is a great example of men opening up about how shitty they can be too.
As I finally wrap up my thoughts here, let’s just say there’s a reason I didn’t elaborate further on one particular needle drop that’s the centerpiece of a make out scene here in this movie. That’s deliberate because it ties into my next essay directly (#50). It’ll be a nice segway into what’s coming, but suffice to say, most people who know me probably know which song I’m about to share thoughts on soon. All The Real Girls is a movie that is more than just a lo-fi Garden State about another manic quirky dream girl saving a sad dude who’s been too much of a player around town. I suppose I can see it being reduced to that by people who didn’t experience what happens in this movie directly, but that’s actually the opposite read for me. It’s about the complicated feelings that every single character has as each attempt to navigate through the personal experience of love, whether it’s from a parental standpoint, a brotherly sense of protection, close friendship or trying to share something “real” with another human being.
I’m not sure if I will ever see another love story about falling in love with your best friend’s sister while living with your mother and what happens when that love changes into a sense of loss suddenly. Noel changes, Paul can’t deal with it. He reacts poorly. But will they both just move forward and learn to cope? The film’s ending doesn’t necessarily provide an answer to the future of what either of them will become. It does end with a feeling of hope that things will become stable despite the fact that they weren’t meant to be. I know things have become great for both Nate’s sister and me, though we weren’t meant to be and young love doesn’t mean it’s meant to be lifelong. Sometimes, it is better to remain close friends from a distance using social media as a way of checking in. I bet that’s exactly what happened to Noel and Paul too. They also said goodbye and that’s good. This film, “has my heart.”
the trailers online seem to be in poor quality so let’s go with the opening scene