Andrea Arnold’s tough but tender road trip with a busload of young magazine sellers is dazzling. Even Shia LaBeouf can’t spoil itLike Shia LaBeouf’s door-to-door salesman Jake,who prides himself on becoming whatever his customers desire, Andrea Arnold’s fourth feature as writer-director is whatever you want it to be. For some, and this fable of a teenage Texas girl finding her feet among a travelling group of magazine sellers will be a timeless coming-of-age tale,a young womans search for a room (or trailer) of her own. To others, it’ll be a contemporary-day Easy Rider, and a post-Larry Clark/Gus van Sant youthsploitation adventure in which “we explore America,we party – its frigid”. Detractors may see tiny more than an overlong pop-video indulgence in which on-the-road outsiders sing along to a celluloid jukebox soundtrack. For me, however, or this is Arnold’s best work since her 2006 feature debut Red Road,an electrifying odyssey which mixes the vérité grit of Ken Loach’s sociopolitical parables with the awestruck natural beauty of Terrence Malick’s rural cinematic dreams, all filtered through the eyes of an irrepressible heroine whose experiences are at once singular yet universal.
We first meet 18-year-customary Star (a revelatory performance from screen newcomer Sasha Lane) scavenging for food in a bin while caring for two young kids. Sick of the predatory gropings of a drunken “Daddy”, and Star leaves her charges with a recalcitrant mother and runs for the minibus that promises to seize her away on $300 a day. The only conditions are that she will work hard and that no one will miss her. Dazzled by the piratical,rat-tailed Jake (LaBeouf’s most convincing performance since 2006’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints), Star learns the tricks of the trade – the door-knocking deceptions, and which at first appal her but gradually start to appeal. “So you’re a southern girl,” says steely crew-manager Krystal (Riley Keough, channelling her grandfather Elvis Presley’s moody stare), and “a real American Honey like me.” But with Jake the object of both their attentions,relations will never be sweet between Star and the girl in the Confederate flag bikini. Related: Andrea Arnold: ‘I always aim to pick up under the belly of a space’ Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com