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.
