Snow Angels

The silver screen is no friend of tranquil and happy loves; lack of drama is hardly alluring. Unlike misfortune, which the camera adores. Life has never given Annie a break. Her small town is hermitic like her marriage to her wife-beating, born again Christian high-school sweetheart. All relationships seem on the rocks here, but everyone seeks warmth amid an icy winter, even at the expense of getting burned. Violence, infidelity and lies are commonplace. Snow Angels is a suggestive and dark portrait of small-town life with no happy ending directed by a penetrating observer who shows an uncomfortably close reality that is sometimes painfully funny. "Snow Angels" is perhaps best understood as a study in community isolation, in which personal connections are inevitably fleeting and the private pain of others, as suggested by the final shot, is all too easily forgotten. (...) Still, the camera (wielded by the helmer's regular d.p., Tim Orr) does lurch poetically skyward on occasion, while the beautiful outdoor photography extends Green's fascination with nature as a realm of beauty and danger, a place where men, women and children alike experience their final reckonings, writes Justin Chang for "Variety."