The Starling Girl: Doesn't quite fly

The Starling Girl (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, and too harshly, for mild sexuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

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.

 

Jem (Eliza Scanlen, foreground center) is happiest while dancing, even if it's merely a
chaste "worship performance" during her community church service.

But although Eliza Scanlen delivers a richly nuanced starring performance — she’s well remembered as Beth March, in 2019’s Little Women — Parmet’s film too frequently feels as flat, lifeless and colorless as the enclave in which this story is set.

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.

 

Little Women: Hugely entertaining

Little Women (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.20.19

Little Women has hit the big screen seven previous times, starting with silent versions in 1917 and ’18. Director Greta Gerwig’s new handling is by far the most sumptuously realized: a passionately heartfelt adaptation that honors author Louisa May Alcott as much as her celebrated 1868 novel.

At a time when "economic necessity" grants women little choice but to marry, the March
sisters — from left, Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh), Jo (Saoirse Ronan)
and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) — yearn for more satisfying destinies. Can any such dreams
be realized?

Gerwig’s thoughtful script faithfully acknowledges all of the book’s major plot points, but not slavishly; she employs split timelines to heighten key revelations while adding a bit of suspense, and cheekily massages the conclusion to add a bit of Alcott’s own life to the semi-autobiographical finale that embraces her beloved March sisters.

That latter touch is audacious, given how deeply invested so many readers are, in these iconic characters — well over a century later! — but Gerwig pulls it off: as neat an act of eating her cake, and having it too, as has been seen on the big screen for quite awhile.

It’s also noteworthy that this saga feels family-next-door sincere, rather than the stuff of contrived melodrama. Credit goes to Gerwig’s finely tuned ear for authentic conversation and emotions, and the care with which she lifted dialog right off the page, and (significantly) Alcott’s forward-thinking concern with female equality, long before such things became even acknowledged, let alone acted upon.

But even the most carefully crafted dialog relies upon its delivery system. Gerwig scores here as well, having drawn uniformly strong performances from a talented cast headed by Saoirse Ronan (Jo), Emma Watson (Meg), Florence Pugh (Amy) and Eliza Scanlen (Beth). 

The film opens as Jo, an aspiring author, successfully places a short story with publisher Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts) … but only after succumbing to editing demands that gut the little tale. She’s living in a boarding house in New York City, and has caught the eye of young literature professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel).

Believing him a kindred spirit, she shares some of her work … and is dismayed when he judges her stories inconsequential little trifles. Ronan plays Jo’s reaction just right; she’s angry, embarrassed, humiliated and defiant … all while stubbornly overlooking Friedrich’s quiet insistence that she can do better.