DVD Release Date:  September 16, 2008

At the cinema, alienated spouses and their emotionally damaged offspring have become more common ever since American Beauty in 1999. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening struck a chord with the public in that movie, which won Spacey a Best Actor Oscar and took home the prize for Best Picture. The film was troubling in that it celebrated irresponsibility and hedonism. Its most touching element was the budding romance between the couple’s daughter and a young man to whom she feels a connection.

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In 2005, a much more lacerating film about the breakup of a marriage, The Squid and the Whale, showed the dissolution of the marital union through the eyes of one of the couple’s sons. The film is a devastating portrait of adult selfishness and the confusion it brings in the lives of those forced into emotional maturity before their time.

Now comes another smaller-scale picture of broken marriages and a teenage boy trying to come to terms with tragic circumstances. Director David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels is a refreshing break from the inconsequential—and often incompetent—recent cinematic output now playing at the local multiplex, but it’s not entirely successful on its own terms. Although it raises interesting questions about the nature of Christian faith and belief, the film is ultimately too grim, not to mention too explicit in its violence and implied teen sexuality.

Sam Rockwell, in an excellent performance, stars as Glenn, a husband estranged from his wife, Annie (Kate Beckinsale), but trying, with God’s help, to win her back. Annie’s distrust of Glenn is established early in the film, with hints that Glenn has had an emotionally unstable past. We slowly learn that Glenn had unsuccessfully attempted suicide when Annie first left him, but had an epiphany in the immediate aftermath and became a born-again Christian.

Darker hints lead to other revelations. “Daddy’s not drinking beer anymore,” Glenn tells his daughter, who he sees infrequently. He’s reformed, and his boss at the carpet warehouse where he works is eager to discuss the Bible with Glenn. But when Glenn’s suspicions about Annie seeing another man are confirmed, he shows up at her house drunk and looking for a fight.

In a related storyline, the film introduces Arthur (Michael Angarano), a high-school student who works at a Chinese restaurant with Annie, who babysat him when he was a young boy. At school, Arthur befriends Lila (Olivia Thirlby). Their budding romance provides Arthur with a refuge from the dissolution of his parents’ marriage, as his father (Griffin Dunne) chases after another woman. Arthur tells others that his mom blames him for her separation from his father, although his dad asserts that the separation has nothing to do with Arthur. Annie’s life, meanwhile, is threatened not only by Glenn’s instability but by her own destructive choice in taking up with a friend’s spouse.