American Honey Film Review - A vulnerable girl making poor lifestyle choices
BFI - Film 4 drama - written and directed by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, filmed in the USA.
Our skip-diving heroine 'Star' is a teenage girl with nothing to lose. She joins a band of misfits travelling the Midwest going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions. The band are a microcosm, they are a band of societies rejects but feel they at least belong to each other.
They not only pitch to the privileged wealthy, we also see a scene where a 'failed' pitch to squalid poverty leads Star to buy a basket load of shopping to fill the empty fridge, she has sympathy for people in her own situation.
4:3 aspect ratio has been used to emphasise the atmospheric close-ups, and the big skies shot to emphasis all the youngsters big aspirations.
There are many visual metaphors of insects, mainly to remind us that the moth is trapped and so is Star, the wasp wants to escape and so does Star. The cows in a truck are on their way to be slaughtered and so represents the depressing entrapment that Star feels.
There was an occasion where Star is offered money while she was vulnerable in exchange for implied sex (but she was saved from that situation) and later she decides against full sex for money, these desperate lifestyle choices (which is all so often the only option) is not the path Star wanted to take.
Though it doesn't feel long, could probably still benefit from some careful editing.
7/10.
Our skip-diving heroine 'Star' is a teenage girl with nothing to lose. She joins a band of misfits travelling the Midwest going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions. The band are a microcosm, they are a band of societies rejects but feel they at least belong to each other.
They not only pitch to the privileged wealthy, we also see a scene where a 'failed' pitch to squalid poverty leads Star to buy a basket load of shopping to fill the empty fridge, she has sympathy for people in her own situation.
4:3 aspect ratio has been used to emphasise the atmospheric close-ups, and the big skies shot to emphasis all the youngsters big aspirations.
There are many visual metaphors of insects, mainly to remind us that the moth is trapped and so is Star, the wasp wants to escape and so does Star. The cows in a truck are on their way to be slaughtered and so represents the depressing entrapment that Star feels.
There was an occasion where Star is offered money while she was vulnerable in exchange for implied sex (but she was saved from that situation) and later she decides against full sex for money, these desperate lifestyle choices (which is all so often the only option) is not the path Star wanted to take.
Though it doesn't feel long, could probably still benefit from some careful editing.
7/10.
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