All the Real Girls

A film set in a small town in North Carolina. Paul is the young man everyone in town knows. He has never been with anyone for long and has not thought of it as a problem. Then Noel, his closest friend's sister, comes home from boarding school. They start seeing each other. This time Paul is serious and careful with her. But Noel has never been with anyone and carries that as a lack. What the film is interested in is not the relationship itself but two people living the same thing at different speeds. The narrative builds no plot. The scenes are long, the dialogue is close to improvised, and the characters often cannot finish their sentences. The state of the town is part of the story: closed factories, empty streets and young people with nowhere to go. Paul Schneider plays Paul and Zooey Deschanel plays Noel. Shea Whigham and Patricia Clarkson are in the cast. David Gordon Green directed; his second film. The cinematography is what it is most praised for, with wide compositions and natural light. An honest example for anyone who likes American independent cinema and quiet relationship stories. For a viewer expecting incident, the film describes almost nothing and the pace is very slow.