Glasgow Film Festival 2015: White Bird in a Blizzard

Closer in spirit to his Mysterious Skin than The Doom Generation, White Bird in a Blizzard sees Gregg Araki adapting a Laura Kasischke novel and applying his trademark gifts for depicting both the sweet and the sour of adolescence. Beginning in the late 80s, it sees 17-year-old Kat (Woodley) going through a sexual awakening while reckoning with the sudden disappearance of her mother, Eve, which follows years of increasingly strange behaviour towards both her husband (Meloni) and Kat.

Eve is played, predominantly in flashback, by Eva Green on an acting register suggesting Faye Dunaway dropped into a Douglas Sirk melodrama, but not always as compelling as that sounds. Woodley leaves a better impression, but, like Kat describes her stoner boyfriend, what’s behind the surface of Araki’s film is just more surface. Little of its psychological explorations hold great weight and its mystery elements are fumbled by Araki's louder directorial instincts. 

---

The Skinny at Glasgow Film Festival 2015:

Read our daily updates from the GFF at theskinny.co.uk/cineskinny

---