Haunted by snowbound dreams and visions since her mother's abrupt disappearance, a teenager has trouble processing her grief in this sombre drama from Gregg Araki with Shailene Woodley in the lead role. Less outrageous and nihilistic than the movies Araki first made his name with, 'White Bird in a Blizzard' initially seems quite tame for the esteemed director, but much like 'Mysterious Skin', the film involves a youth wrestling with unhappy memories and a knowledge that she does not really want to face. While Woodley's dreams and visions at first appear to lead her to her mother's whereabouts, they actually represent all the clues and hints along the way that she has repressed, not wanting to really discover the truth of the matter. All the flashbacks reveal a rocky relationship between Woodley and her mother to the point that she probably took it as a blessing in disguise when her mother vanished, and much of the film is therefore about her feelings of guilt; she is only able to solve the mystery once she reconciles the fact that she wished her mother away immediately before her disappearance. Promising as all this might sound, the film is never quite as focused as it arguably ought to be with lots of prolonged periods in which her mother barely crosses her mind. Eva Green's performance as her mother is also problematic. Few actresses can play sinister as well as her, but she looks far too young to have a teen daughter. Woodley is solid throughout though and the underrated Dale Dickey has a nice turn as her blind next door neighbour.
