Eliza Scanlen (Old, HBO’s Sharp Objects) may be a name that doesn’t roll off the tip of our tongues yet, but very well could in a few years if she continues to piece together performances as she has in Little Women, The Devil All The Time, and Babyteeth, she could find herself in the same conversation as her Little Women co-stars Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and Emma Watson. Some may think she’s already there but still needs the supporting body of work. In either case, her performance as Jem Starling, a 17-year-old discovering her identity while growing up in a Kentucky fundamentalist Christian community, is nothing short of mesmerizing in Laurel Parmet’s, albeit flawed, directorial debut, The Starling Girl.
There’s not a whole lot to miss in this movie. It’s a film we think we’ve seen before, though we aren’t entirely sure until the first piece unfolds. Once that happens, we are entrenched in familiar territory, which Parmet cannot escape. It is not the story or the director that sustains a predictable plot. Instead, it is Scanlen’s performance. Without her, this film would have faltered grandly. Instead, Scanlen holds it together and shows us that whatever direction the story went, we had a character that we understood, cared about, and were rooting for.
When Owen (Lewis Pullman – Top Gun: Maverick, Battle of the Sexes), the church pastor’s adult son, returns from a mission trip to Puerto Rico, he is tasked with looking over the youth programs. It isn’t stated for how long Owen had been away. Jem and Owen knew of each other before his trip. Their first conversation upon his return is nothing spectacular. She comes out of the church crying because of something that was said to her by one of the female elders. He’s smoking a cigarette on the side of the building. She welcomes him home, and he requests that she not mention the cigarette, to which she agrees. Outwardly, there is nothing unusual about the exchange. Inwardly, Jem views Owen differently than she did before he left the community, and though he is some ten years older, as well as married, maybe, just maybe, she notices a gleam in his eyes or a hint in his voice that suggests that he views her differently, too.
Are we headed toward the territory of a young woman curious about exploring her sexuality for the first time? Or are we being introduced to a man who will soon prey on a beautiful, vulnerable teenager trying to figure out what she wants from life, which includes this foreign concept of romantic love, lust, or something in between? What feelings can she have on her own, and will she be forced to be guided by her faith, rigid community, and strict family? Is she allowed to have a view of herself, sexual or otherwise, outside of her conservative community?
As the dynamic begins to evolve between the two leads, we feel that we’ve seen this before, whether it be in cinema, what we see in the news, or through something far more personal in our lives. So you will likely watch what plays out in several ways. You might find it understandable, relatable, or even beautiful in its free expression. Or you might be completely turned off or disgusted by it. It’s almost sure to be divisive.
While Jem and Owen are our central figures, The Starling Girl wouldn’t exist without its supporting characters, though some feel far more integral than others. Jem’s father, Paul (Jimmi Simpson (Date Night, White House Down), is a recovering alcoholic who is a good man and has been on the straight and narrow for quite some time. Unfortunately, he is sent spiraling fairly early in the movie after learning that a once-good friend (from before Jem and her sisters were born) had committed suicide. Jem’s mother, Heidi (Wrenn Schmidt – Nope, I Saw the Light), pays no heed to Paul’s drinking and, perhaps, as the emotional support that her husband needs. I left this movie not understanding why this was a sub-story. I’m still not sure other than maybe there is a certain expectation of perfectionism and purity in the tight-knit community and that any acting out needs to be addressed outside the commune (another situation within the film suggests this).
For out of place as Paul felt, that of Ben (Austin Abrams – Paper Towns, Brad’s Status) felt even worse. Ben is the much younger brother (Jem’s age) of Owen. He is taken a liking to Jem and has begun the act of courtship, to which both sets of parents have agreed, so much as telling the potential couple that they are looking forward to joining families one day. Ben is geeky and awkward. He seems to have as little interest in a relationship with Jem as she does with him, though, in his defense, if he is being told at 17 that he needs to begin the courting process, he selects the most beautiful woman available. Unfortunately, Jem has zero attraction to Ben. What felt out of place here was that Ben was Owen’s brother. It wasn’t so much that there was a forced courtship as it was that Owen and Ben just happened to be related (though I’m uncertain if they had a single interaction in the film and may have only been visible in the same scene a couple of times.
Jem is the film’s true protagonist and a sympathetic character, regardless of how much or how little she attempts to lure Owen. He is the adult. She is the child. End of argument. End of discussion. Unfortunately, that was not the way that the community viewed it. Owen was the poster child…the pastor’s son who went on a mission trip to change the world and return home an even better man, destined to become a pastor like his father. Parmet examines the toll on Jem and how factors beyond her control can distort her feelings about her purpose until she begins to crumble under the weight of her inner turmoil.
What Parmet did exceptionally well was displaying the depth of Jem’s character. There was undeniably a sexual attraction to Owen. Her crush on an attractive, slightly older man whom she greatly respects and admires is far from an uncommon scenario. As Owen begins paying more attention to Jem while standing nearer in proximity to her for increasingly longer periods, her “impure thoughts” and the realization that she’s reached the age of woman beauty-hood where someone as attractive as a man married to a beautiful wife could still entice him sexually. Equally as effective was Owen’s continual attempts to resist Jem. Had she not continually put herself in her path, would he have eventually pursued her anyway? Would he have found a woman outside of his marriage, regardless? Or was Jem indeed the woman he was destined to be with? Far more questions than answers, which is good.
The main problem with The Starling Girl was its ending. The last 15-20 minutes lacked cohesion. There were only a few probable directions that Parmet (who also wrote the film) could have taken us, all of which we were familiar with. While I generally appreciate, more than I don’t, endings that allow for interpretation, this ending was less than satisfying. I thought the movie had reached its final scene three times before it ultimately did. Each of those false finishes would have felt equally as displeasing as the one Parmet settled on. In a way, it felt as if Parmet had crafted these multi-dimensional characters in a quaint story and didn’t know how to finish it in a way that allowed closure for each of us.
It felt like I had seen The Starling Girl many times before, albeit with slightly different plotlines and characters. This is not to diminish a film that does far more right than wrong. However, this statement is much more of a criticism than a compliment. I wanted Parmet to take her movie in a direction I wasn’t expecting. Unfortunately, this never happened.
Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 8/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 8.5/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 7.5/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 9.5/10
82.5%
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