"All the Real Girls" is a beautiful effort by writer/director David Gordon Green to visualize inarticulate people as they struggle with love.
The scenic North Carolina landscape surrounds the characters as they seek, unsuccessfully, for comparable inner beauty with romance and family. But human interactions can't be as perfect as a sunset.
Every person here is hurting in some way (including a widower uncle and a developmentally disabled brother), and if they aren't in the beginning they are by the end as they have to learn to stop idealizing the people they love, who can't live up to that. Some reconcile to it, some can't, and none can explain it.
In this small town, everyone knows everyone's business and heart and can't walk away from that intimacy. While that is realistic and the dialogue is very naturalistic, it's a bit unsatisfying to watch as a romantic drama.
Hunky co-creator Paul Schneider (strikingly like young Kevin Costner) sets up the confusion when he tries to convince us he's the town heartbreaker; I did not pick up for quite awhile that he was supposed to be such a bad boy as he just seemed so sweet from the first scene on. His laidback scenes with aggressive Zooey Deschanel are full of such tenderness as the full force of First True Love hits them, that the disappointments that follow are are quite the downer.
"Tully" had very similar character and story arcs, and, while schmaltzier, was more satisfying as a movie experience.
The alt-country instrumental and song soundtrack, including Mark Olson & the Creekdippers, is quite poignant.
