Wie ein weißer Vogel im Schneesturm

Rebellious teenager Kat Connors is only 17 when in 1988 her mother disappears in a blink, leaving her alone with her dull pushover of a father. Initially indifferent to the situation Kat soon has to reflect, and come to terms with her mother's absence while she comes of age and succumbs to her own primal sexual urges. Unorthodox, uneven mix of coming-of-age teen drama and police procedural doesn't mesh cohesively, especially with some fanciful dream sequences thrown in, plus there's a disconnect between the acting styles of Woodley, who brings a real authenticity to her role, and Green, who's unnerving and a bit too over-the-top. There's enough of the family dysfunction, youthful debauchery, and verbal diarrhea to keep a viewer invested, but the ending, which is meant to be shocking, instead just lacks conviction or impact. **

This movie starts off slowly. It is in the perspective of a gorgeous teenager who is solely concerned with her boyfriend. When her mom goes missing, she assumes that her mom kept her promise to leave her dad. As she recaps the relationship between her parents, the viewer is compelled to feel sorry for the wimpy father and agree with the teen's apathy towards her aggressive mother. In utter dismissal of her mom's abandonment, the teenager tries to focus on her boyfriend's reduced sexual interest. However, her intuition about her mother's disappearance keeps alerting her through inexplicable dreams. Then, when the teenager becomes an adult, things get GOOD! At the end, I realized that I really underestimated this movie. I had no idea this movie was going to be this good. I am glad I watched it and I want to see it again in order to catch some clues that I may have missed. The plot twist at the end REALLY caught me off-guard and I am still wondering if there was some hint throughout the movie that I missed. If anyone catches the hints, be sure to post them as spoilers.

"I was 17 when my mother disappeared. Just as I was becoming nothing but my body, she stepped out of hers and left it behind." Kat (Woodley) is about to graduate high school and has great friends, a loving father and a mother (Green) who is very unstable and bitter. One day her mother goes missing and no one knows what happened. Little by little Kat and her father begin to move on. During Kat's return home during a college break the mystery comes up again but this time Kat wants to know what really happened. This is a great movie and I highly recommend this. There are enough aspects to this that keep you guessing and interested the entire time. The only bad thing I can say about this is that it was released a few weeks too late. Had this come out before I saw Gone Girl I think I would have liked it more. The idea is fairly similar but I though Gone Girl was better. That movie had me guessing the entire time and I was wrong every time. I love movies like that. This one had me guessing too but I was able to stay ahead of it just enough to where I wasn't as surprised like I was with Gone Girl. That said though I do highly recommend this movie and is one to check out for sure. Overall, a great movie that is hurt a little by the amazingness of Gone Girl being released the week before. I give this an A-.

"And just like that, my virginity disappeared. Just like my mother."

I did not make that quote up; Shailene Woodley's character (Kat Connors) actually says this while she narrates her life to a psychologist played by Angela Bassett. I wasn't familiar with director Gregg Araki's previous work, but I found this mysterious thriller problematic and at odds with itself. On the one hand it focuses on Kat's sexual awakening, but on the other we are introduced with some cartoonish characters like Eva Green's Eve Connors who seems to be playing a similar role as she did in 300 and Sin City. She gives a very campy performance, while Woodley is playing an authentic character. I just found the tone of the film very strange and didn't buy into the mix of styles. Araki is playing with genre conventions here mixing the coming of age tale with other familiar thrillers, but it didn't work for me because the dialogue at times is unbelievable and Araki seems to be leaving us false hints of what actually happened only to pull the rug under us with a twist at the end of the film. White Bird in a Blizzard is based on Laura Kasischke's novel of the same name and was adapted by Araki himself. I've never read the novel so I don't know if it has a similar tone, but the film felt surreal at times. There are some great looking scenes during Kat's dream sequences, but there isn't much more going on story wise.

It's funny because the plot of this film is what I thought The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby would be like. A woman goes missing and the film would revolve around the mystery behind her disappearance. Kat (Shailene Woodley) narrates the events of her mother's disappearance (Eva Green) claiming she had never been in love with her father, Brock (Christopher Meloni). Kat believes she simply got fed up with Brock and walked out on him. Her relationship with her mother hasn't been great either so she doesn't seem to mind her absence. She is comfortable with her current situation and doesn't think she even needs to talk to a psychologist about it. When she was young her mother treated her like a pet, but once she got older she began to resent her for her youth and beauty. Kat meanwhile is in a relationship with her next door neighbor, Phil (Shiloh Fernandez), who is her first love. Lately he hasn't seemed too interested in spending time with her, and when her mother goes missing, she and her father file a report with Detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane) who she finds attractive despite the age difference. Kat is very open with her two best friends, Beth (Gabourey Sidibe) and Mickey (Mark Indelicate) about her sexual life. There isn't very much going on with the plot since Kat doesn't think much about her mother's mysterious disappearance and we know how she feels because she is narrating the story to her psychiatrist. Things change when a few years pass and Kat returns home from college. She discovers that her mother's disappearance has affected her more than she realized and we begin to discover new elements about the mystery. This final act of the film plays out more as a traditional mystery movie and I was actually surprised with the final reveal. It is a shift of tone from what we had seen during the first half of the movie which played out as a coming of age sexual awakening tale. I can't recommend White Bird in a Blizzard, but it does have its moments. Shailene Woodley delivers a very strong performance (but I still think she was better in The Descendants and The Spectacular Now) and she is a talented young actress. I wasn't a fan of Eva Green's campy performance, but I have read some praise. Other than Woodley's performance I don't think there is much more worth recommending here.

This movie is a hard movie to rate I feel, although many scenes are well orchestrated together as a movie it just doesn't make you feel anything, and the ending is clearly meant to be moving and shocking but it's really not.

Acting is... Okay, it's not bad but again the cast fail to make you sympathise with any of them, visually it's really good looking so that's always a plus but a lot of times the movie seems more focused on showcasing Shailene Woodley's breasts than anything else.

Now there's nothing wrong with them at all, in fact they are pretty neat however I'd prefer her keeping her clothes on if that meant that the director could focus on telling the story in it's best way as possible.

Listed as a drama/mystery/thriller but the drama that is feel too flat and superficial to ever hit an emotional core, even though it tries in the end but by then it's too late and based on how the characters interacted with each other previous having that boastful dramatic ending simply does not make much sense.

As far as the mystery well... sure there is some mystery I suppose but there are only so many ways it can end so it doesn't become very successful in that department either, plus most times it focuses on the teenager's sex-life more than anything else.

As far as the thriller goes, well even less there going on honestly, there's not many scenes of suspense here to be found.

No tbh it felt like this movie would work a lot better if they did it as a dark comedy and went a little more crazy with it, I think the movie could have succeeded at being that with just minor tweaks to the script.

I was debating whether to give it a 5 or a 4 but after writing down my thoughts here it has to be a 4 after all, there is talent involved but the movie just kinda feels a bit pointless.