White Bird in a Blizzard

For those tuned in to his unique wavelength, every Gregg Araki film (including The Doom Generation and Mysterious Skin) has its pleasures. Despite some tonal inconsistencies, White Bird in a Blizzard, based on Laura Kasischke's novel, is no exception. In her third adapted film of 2014, after Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, Shailene Woodley plays Kat, a suburban teenager with a malapropism-spouting boyfriend (Shilo Fernandez). One day, her mother, Eve (Eva Green), disappears without a trace. Her devastated father, Brock (Christopher Meloni), contacts a detective (Thomas Jane), with whom Kat has a fling, but Eve remains lost and Kat goes off to college. Flashbacks, meanwhile, reveal Kat's mother to be a woman jealous of her daughter and resentful of her husband. It's an intriguing setup, and Araki has fun with the 1988–1990 timeline—Joy Division posters, This Mortal Coil T-shirts, etc.—but Green is only 11 years older than Woodley, so she struggles to bring the deeply felt mature performance the film needs to put it over the top, often acting as if she's on the set of a period melodrama, while everyone else comes across more realistically, although Araki may have made that choice to emphasize her alienation. Well worth watching for Woodley's turn as a self-obsessed young woman with more in common with her mother than she would care to admit, this is recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Gregg Araki and star Shailene Woodley, deleted and extended scenes (10 min.), interviews with Araki (8 min.) and Woodley (6 min.), an AXS TV segment (3 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for another showcase for up-and-comer Woodley.] (K. Fennessy)