White Bird in a Blizzard is by no means a bad movie, but there just isn’t enough story to sustain its brief but leisurely 91 minutes. Shailene Woodley plays a 17-year-old whose neurotic mother (Eva Green!) suddenly disappears without a trace. She’s now living alone with her stolid dad (Christopher Meloni), hanging with her offbeat high school buddies and exploring her sexuality with the investigating police detective. The crux of the movie is that she’s trying to imagine why and how her mother left, all the while ignoring one of the most likely scenarios.
It’s all a mild disappointment from writer-director Gregg Araki. I loved Araki’s 2004 masterpiece Mysterious Skin (with Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and enjoyed his sci-fi sex romp Kaboom. White Bird in a Blizzard is weird at times, but not as “Araki weird” as it perhaps needed to be. He pretty much wastes Woodley, one of our very finest screen actresses. She’s very good, as is Thomas Jane as the detective.
White Bird in a Blizzard opens tomorrow in theaters and is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.