A semi-charmed kind of film with real heart

Like the confused young people whose tumultuous emotions it details, David Gordon Green’s “All the Real Girls” is exhilarating as well as a little bit frustrating to spend time with.

A breakthrough vehicle for co-star Zooey Deschanel, it’s a sad love story that’s insightful at its core and indulgent around the edges, a film whose instincts are impeccable when focusing on that romance but less than compelling when it wanders elsewhere.

And, without a doubt, wander it does, for writer-director Green, whose first film was the festival circuit favorite “George Washington,” has a quiet, contemplative style that will take some getting used to for many people.

Working in a seemingly off-the-cuff, improvisational mode, the filmmaker’s point of view can seem almost defiantly anti-dramatic. Shooting both of his features deep in North Carolina (where he went to film school), Green embodies the cinematic equivalent of the “slow food” movement: He’s never in a hurry, never afraid of stillness, determined to avoid razzle-dazzle no matter what it takes.

While the practically plotless “George Washington” was next door to a tone poem, in “All the Real Girls” Green is determined to tell a classic romantic story with his semidetached style. Helped by the film’s soulful soundtrack, he is going for, and to a surprising degree reaching, a deeper truth, a realistic sense of what it’s like finding yourself in the unexpectedly disorienting position of being young and in love.

“The worst thing when I watch movies,” Green explained in an interview, “is half the time I can picture the witty screenplay writer sitting at his typewriter, chuckling about how the audience is going to love his smart clever lines. We wanted to erase all that and root it all in a passionate guy’s heart rather than the caustic wit of the screenwriter.”

“All the Real Girls” is unexpectedly adept at conveying the less talked-about aspects of being so smitten you can’t think straight. This film looks at how perplexing our emotions can be and how desperate they can make us feel. More to the point, it understands how being infatuated can mean doing things we didn’t really intend and facing consequences we truly never anticipated.

“All the Real Girls” opens with a typical Green situation, a quiet two-shot lasting several minutes that shows two young lovers about to share their first kiss in a quiet corner of a quiet North Carolina milltown. Their age difference is small, but the gap in their experience levels is considerable.

Though Paul (Paul Schneider) is just 22 and still living with his mother (the always interesting Patricia Clarkson), he is very much the town’s Lothario, methodically working his way through every girl in town. Noel (Deschanel), by contrast, is an especially inexperienced 18-year-old, the sister of Paul’s best friend, Tip (Shea Wingham), and newly back in town after six years spent in boarding school.

That romantic kiss leads to a relationship of surprising and quite believable complexity. “Real Girls” is especially good at delineating the tensions that can result when we view romantic partners as dream objects rather than real people, when the innocent Noel’s desire for experience runs up against the experienced Paul’s passion for innocence.

Writer-director Green not only wrote the Paul part for Schneider, a film school buddy who was also in “George Washington,” he actually conceptualized the film with him. Perhaps for this reason, Schneider handles the film’s complex emotions well, and he and his co-star have an appealing chemistry even though he has too teddy bearish a persona to be completely believable as a ruthless seducer.

Deschanel, by contrast, is all she should be and more as Noel, perfectly capturing that pivotal moment of balance between childhood and the adult world, when vulnerability, confidence, confusion and yearning all collide in an emotional maelstrom. Previously known for small comic roles in “The Good Girl,” “Almost Famous” and “Mumford,” Deschanel’s best, most alive qualities have been liberated by Green’s deliberate style, and she’s unlikely to be known for small roles again.

It would be nice if all there was to “All the Real Girls” was the Paul/Noel relationship, but, especially in the first half, that is not the case. The film spends an inordinate amount of time with people you’re soon eager to escape, whether they be Paul’s trio of feckless, bump-on-a-log buddies or his solemn uncle, characters that the film’s leisurely pace makes less rather than more involving.

That fascination with beer-drinking buddies is a reminder that Green, something of a wunderkind with two features already completed and “A Confederacy of Dunces” in his future, is still only 27. He can’t be any older than he is, and while his closeness to the time of first love helps immeasurably, it also means that he brings a quantity of age-appropriate baggage with him. It will likely drop away in time and, even if it doesn’t, it’s a price worth paying for what is special about “All the Real Girls.”

*

‘All the Real Girls’

MPAA rating: R for language and some sexuality

Times guidelines: Mature subject matter

Paul Schneider...Paul

Zooey Deschanel...Noel

Patricia Clarkson...Elvira

Benjamin Mouton...Leland

Shea Wingham...Tip

Released by Sony Pictures Classics. Director David Gordon Green. Producers Jean Doumanian, Lisa Muskat. Screenplay David Gordon Green. Cinematographer Tim Orr. Costumes Erin Orr. Music David Wingo, Michael Linnen.

Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes. In limited release.