Although the setting is unconventional, writer/director Laurel Parmet’s quiet character study focuses on a familiar theme: the coming-of-age saga of a young woman caught between community and parental expectations, and her desire for individuality and self-expression.
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| Jem (Eliza Scanlen, foreground center) is happiest while dancing, even if it's merely a chaste "worship performance" during her community church service. |
Seventeen-year-old Jem Starling (Scanlen), the eldest child of parents Paul and Heidi (Jimmi Simpson and Wrenn Schmidt), has grown up in an insular fundamentalist Christian community in rural Kentucky. Under the strict guidance of Pastor Taylor (Kyle Secor), everybody practices extreme patriarchal values: Men’s words are the words of God, and women must submit to them.
The story begins with a church service highlighted by a “worship dance” performed by Jem and several other teenage girls. They’re barefoot, dressed in the purity of white; arm movements are minimal and reserved, always reaching toward heaven.
Pastor Taylor is pleased. Moments later, though, Jem is humiliated and embarrassed when one of the other mothers chides her for wearing “the wrong kind of bra” … because, apparently, people can tell that she is wearing a bra.
(Constant Companion and I exchanged a puzzled look. Seriously?)
It quickly becomes clear that dance is Jem’s sole outlet: the one thing that allows her to express herself, however delicately. But this sets up a struggle within her soul, as she worries whether pride, and a desire to stand out, are at odds with her worship of God.
The dynamic shifts with the return of Pastor Taylor’s elder son, Owen (Lewis Pullman), and his wife Misty (Jessamine Burgum), who’ve been doing missionary work in Puerto Rico. Owen takes over as the community’s youth pastor; he’s charismatic, a bit rebellious and dangerously flirty.
Jem, meanwhile, has assumed a leadership role in the dance troupe: a position that makes several of the other girls quite catty, with sidelong comments that imply Jem has become too full of herself. That, too, is not the proper way to worship God.
Surprisingly, Owen insists that God wants Jem to enjoy and love dancing; this encouragement prompts Jem to embrace her performance instincts, and teach the troupe more expressive choreography.
Then, disturbingly, Owen’s attention becomes too up close and personal: a dangerous dynamic that catches Jem at the worst possible moment, while she’s already struggling with her developing sexuality.
To make matters even worse, Jem’s parents and Pastor Taylor abruptly decide that it’s time for Jem to begin chastely “courting” with Owen’s younger brother, Ben (Austin Abrams).
“But I don’t even talk to him,” she weakly objects. Not that her opinion means anything.
By now, it has become painfully obvious that — in its effort to avoid the secular, “ungodly influences” of the outside world — this community has built its own toxic environment. Parmet’s tone never is judgmental, but the moment-by-moment evidence is deeply unsettling; there’s no question that this enclave’s men are blithely willing to justify any behavior as “the will of God,” while forcing women to meekly put up with it.
Scanlen and Pullman share a credible dynamic — full of mutual desire, hesitation, doubt and recklessness — and the increasingly dangerous bond between Jem and Owen is this film’s strongest element. Scanlen is by turns withdrawn and coquettish, timid and bold, cautious and reckless … just like any secular-world teenager.
Pullman makes Owen flirty, selfish and manipulative, yet also well aware that his behavior is inappropriate and deserving of censure. Or is that just a façade, in order to achieve a specific goal? (Let’s put it this way: I wanted to strangle the bastard.)
This captivating pas de deux notwithstanding, Parmet fails to pay similar attention to other equally important details.
Paul, once a musician and hell-raiser who performed in a country rock band, struggles with addiction and spirals into crisis upon learning that one of his former band mates has died. Simpson’s performance is persuasive and heartbreaking; Paul is perilously fragile, finding solace solely via his bond with Jem, over their shared love of music. His iPod is like an amulet for her.
Heidi, on the other hand, is rigidly strict and reserved: the sort who believes that all problems will go away if they’re ignored, and left in God’s hands. Schmidt makes the woman brittle, tightly wound and unyielding. Her notion of “mothering” can’t even be called tough love; it’s simply heartless.
How in the world would Paul and Heidi have met, let alone married and chosen to live in a community that couldn’t possibly have put up with him for so long?
On another note, why does Jem have no friends? Why is she so isolated? And what purpose do her younger siblings serve, except to occasionally take up space?
(It could well be that genuine friendships can’t possibly exist in a community that tacitly encourages everybody to reprimand and spy on each other, under the guise of ensuring that “proper attention is paid to God” … but if that is the case, Parmet doesn’t make it clear.)
Abrams also deserves credit, for persuasively conveying the uncomfortable position into which Ben has been placed. He’s no more familiar with Jem, than she is with him; he nonetheless does his best to abide by this arranged relationship. His awkwardness is both pitiful and endearing.
Abrams’ stand-out scene comes late in the story, when Jem cruelly lashes out at Ben; the young man’s angry reaction — genuine emotion! — is wholly believable.
It’s also a rare burst of authentic behavior in a film that too frequently flattens characters and performances to the point of somnambulance. Halfway through this story, I wished that Jem would run away to New York City, and join the Rockettes, but (of course) Parmet hasn’t made a fairy tale.
Whether she leaves Jem in a “good place” when the film concludes, though, will be up to the individual viewer.
I wasn’t satisfied.
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