Taglines: How far would you go?
Lily (Juno Temple) and Alison (Kay Panabaker) are best friends living in their poverty-stricken home near the Salton Sea. The two are complete opposites: Lily, a suicidal, lives with her single mother, Margaret (Leslie Mann) trying to raise Lily on her own, although Lily thinks she is being neglectful. Alison grew up with her alcoholic dad but somehow finds solace under her uncle Hogan’s (Neal McDonough) automotives and horse.
She is repulsive towards her actions unlike Lily who is somewhat impulsive and rebellious in nature. It is clear that Lily wants to flee from her home. Together, the two girls venture into their secluded town and join skateboarding boys from Los Angeles: Louis (Carlos Pena, Jr.), David (Chris Coy) and Jesse (Kyle Gallner) who Lily gets easily smitten on. Before the boys leave, Jesse kisses Lily and writes his number into her arm which Alison gets upset about.
Lily asks Alison to help her get them to Jesse back in Los Angeles driving Hogan’s truck. At first, Alison is quite hesitant but changes her mind and drives with Lily to Los Angeles. When they stop at a convenience store, Lily saves Alison as she gets caught trying to return the goods Lily stole for them. The two soon find the three boys and Alison drives them to their place.
While walking in the streets, Lily runs into a hustling guy and she demands for his apology. When the guy tries to reason out, David hits his head with a skateboard and the five run away leaving Alison in shock. The group settles at the boy’s abandoned rundown apartment where other homeless teenagers resides. Since the two girls don’t really know much about the boys, Alison tries to warn Lily but Lily just wants to enjoy the moment. Alison shares an intimate moment with Louis but rebuffs him when he starts groping her.
In the morning, Lily and Jesse break into an empty house where Jesse tells her how it used to be his home until his family moved to Arizona only for him to return to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Alison wanders around the city and calls her uncle Hogan and says sorry to him but Hogan tells her to go home and how people are worried about her and Lily. Alison then swears to him she will return home with Lily.
Back at the house, Jesse and Lily start kissing when Jesse notices Lily’s cuts on her inner thighs. He gets intrigued by her suicidal demeanor and also reveals his scar from his chest to make Lily better. When the two get home, David discovers a dating website and convinces a hesitant Jesse to make Lily as a bait into hoaxing and stealing from older men, to which Lily complies. Lily then meets up with the old man and lures him to their place. When they get there, the boys, along with a hesitant Alison show up and David threatens the man with a gun. The boys then steal the man’s money and cellphone before setting him free.
Film Review for Little Birds
Lily and Alison are best friends, unhappy teenagers coming of age on the photogenically desolate shores of California’s storied Salton Sea. That salty, accidentally man-made body of water, with its shoals of calcified fish and bird bones under a relentless desert sun, supplies both a bleak atmosphere and some convenient metaphors for “Little Birds,” Elgin James’s Sundance-incubated debut feature, which follows Lily and Alison on a journey from boredom to danger.
Lily (Juno Temple) is the more troubled of the two — angrier and more prone to impulsive and self-destructive behavior. She lives with her mother (Leslie Mann), who is identified as a Bad Mom in the usual movie shorthand (smoking, getting dolled up to go out drinking, bringing home strange men). The other adult woman in Lily’s life is an aunt (Kate Bosworth) who lives, at wit’s end, with a toddler and a husband suffering from severe brain damage as a result of a war injury.
Alison (Kay Panabaker) is almost lucky by comparison. Though her widowed father (David Warshofsky) is too depressed to play much of a role in her life, she has a surrogate in the person of Hogan (Neal McDonough), a wise and kindly rancher whose horses she helps tend. When Alison asks him why he doesn’t live somewhere else, Hogan responds with a long story about his youthful travels to exotic lands, the upshot of which is that people are cruel and selfish everywhere, so you might as well stay home.
It is hard to say whether Mr. James wants to prove Hogan’s point or dispute it. His view of human behavior is at once harsh and sentimental, and his grasp of the psychology of his characters — Lily in particular — does not always seem solid or consistent. “Little Birds,” much like Alison, regards Lily with a mixture of sympathy and horror. But it also, in a literal sense, fixes her with a prurient, almost predatory gaze, and the camera lingers over her young body in various states of exposure.
I don’t think Mr. James intended to make a creepy, exploitative movie about teenage runaways — or, for that matter, a moralistic, cautionary tale of girls gone bad. But those are the default categories that “Little Birds” stumbles toward, perhaps because the filmmaker has not found a cogent way to channel his curiosity or his empathy. There are some tough, tender, loosely structured scenes of Alison and Lily together, and, after they light out for Los Angeles, some moments of raw lyricism between Lily and her skateboarder beau, Jesse (Kyle Gallner).
He and his pals, feral lost boys of the Southern California dream, widen the rift between Alison and Lily and propel the movie toward a violent, ugly climax. It is impossible not to worry about these young people, but also a little too easy to be shocked at their wild, antisocial ways. And, above all, it is hard not to be reminded of other movies — like Larry Clark’s “Kids,” Nick Cassavetes’s “Alpha Dog,” Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank” — that explore similar territory with greater risk and originality.
Little Birds is a 2011 American film written and directed by Elgin James, and starring Juno Temple and Kay Panabaker. The film follows two girls that leave home to follow two skateboarders to Los Angeles and is loosely based on the life of director Elgin James. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, with Millennium Entertainment acquiring the North American rights to the film.
Little Birds (2012)
Directed by: Elgin James
Starring: Juno Temple, Kay Panabaker, Leslie Mann, Kate Bosworth, David Warshofsky, Kathleen Gati, Scotty Noyd Jr., Kyle Gallner, Carlos PenaVega, Lauren Pennington, Lydia Blanco Garza
Screenplay by: Elgin James
Production Design by: Todd Fjelsted
Cinematography by: Reed Morano
Film Editing by: Suzanne Spangler
Costume Design by: Trayce Gigi Field
Set Decoration by: Rosie Sanders
Art Direction by: J.B. Popplewell
Music by: Elgin James
MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, some violence including a sexual assault, sexuality/nudity, drug and alcohol use – all involving teens.
Distributed by: Millennium Entertainment
Release Date: August 29, 2012
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