Shailene Woodley Has Serious Mommy Issues in White Bird in a Blizzard

Directed by Gregg Araki (Nowhere, Doom Generation) and adapted from a Laura Kasischke novel, White Bird in a Blizzard also stars Eva Green and Christopher Meloni. Don’t let the angsty young adult styling of the beginning of the trailer fool you. Shit gets real pretty fast.

Kat Connors (Shailene Woodley) is 17 years old when her perfect homemaker mother, Eve (Eva Green), a beautiful, enigmatic, and haunted woman, disappears – just as Kat is discovering and relishing her newfound sexuality. Having lived for so long in a stifled, emotionally repressed household, she barely registers her mother’s absence and certainly doesn’t blame her doormat of a father, Brock, (Christopher Meloni) for the loss. In fact, it’s almost a relief. But as time passes, Kat begins to come to grips with how deeply Eve’s disappearance has affected her. Returning home on a break from college, she finds herself confronted with the truth about her mother’s departure, and her own denial about the events surrounding it.

I’m intrigued. Some are saying this film could mark the moment Woodley finally sheds the “teen thing,” but I can’t for the life of me figure out why playing a teenager grappling with very adult issues (as she did so effortlessly in The Descendents) has to be a bad thing to ditch just as soon as you’ve gotten good at it. If you read the book, please chime in with your thoughts on what you think after watching the trailer.