GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW

David Gordon Green, whose 2000 directorial debut George Washington beguiled critics with its quietly artful and pictorially breathtaking depiction of childhood life in a dreamlike American South, turns his focus on young adults in All the Real Girls, in which Paul (Paul Schneider), a onetime lothario, slowly falls in love with Noel (Zooey Deschanel), the sister of his best friend and former partner-in-carousing, Tip (Shea Whigham). At first it seems that Tip's anger over the affair will drive the movie, but that's dispensed with soon enough; Green's main concern is the difficulty of the relationship itself, the disjunction between Paul's voluminous carnal experience and Noel's lack of it, and the problems two souls who have an affinity between them encounter once sex enters the picture. All this is addressed in a relatively oblique, laid-back way, and the characters here aren't at all cosmopolitan — Sex and the City it ain't, and some might find the languid lyricism wearying. While Green can sometimes overdo the whole American Gothic thing — there's a shot of a two-legged dog that's a little, well, much — I enjoyed spending time with his characters (particularly Noel, who's beautifully played by the ever illuminating Deschanel) and in his world.

— Glenn Kenny