Set in the kind of snowy, bleak small town that provides settings for the novels of Richard Russo, Snow Angels often feels like it is gently but determinedly struggling to be less grim than it is. Based on a novel by Stewart O’Nan, it was adapted by David Gordon Green, the young filmmaker who has captured a small but devoted audience with small, poetic films like George Washington, Undertow, and All the Right Girls. It’s a more prosaic, not to mention melodramatic, tale than Green has previously told, and it’s not hard to find instances of him trying to unmoor it from its foundations. The story essentially involves three families, all suffering some degree of marital unhappiness. Worst off are Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and Glenn (Sam Rockwell), who are separated but still in contact due to their four-year-old daughter. These miserable adults are juxtaposed with Arthur (Michael Angarano), a high school student whose parents’ marriage is in trouble (and who has a child was babysat by Annie). He is falling in love with a quirky new girl in his class, a relationship depicted with such good cheer that we keeping looking for signs of stress. But none appear, and I’m not sure what to make of the contrast. Are we to reflect that all of these splitting adults perhaps began their loves with such innocence? Green’s touch with these people, seldom staying with one scene for too long (and always leaving before it gets overplayed) is both so delicate and so sure that it’s a disappointment when tragedy not only enters the story but does so in a way that ensures that things will get worse before they get better. The climax is grim enough to seem to belong to a different film, one that needs to be overlooked to enjoy the one that succeeds—the one that begins with a marching band playing a ridiculous version of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.”
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