The Starling Girl, the feature debut from writer-director Laurel Parmet, sets forth two difficult, easily muddled tasks. First, striking the correct tonal balance for a sexual relationship separated by age and authority – in this case, an intoxicating, transgressive romance between 17-year-old Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) and her brusquely handsome, 28-year-old youth pastor Owen (Lewis Pullman, son of actor Bill). And the second, depicting an insular religious community – a group of fundamentalist Christians in present-day Kentucky – with enough specificity and emotional acuity to bridge the gap with viewers who will find such a place opaque, unrelatable or possibly even unbelievable.
Parmet succeeds more on the former than the latter. The Starling Girl, anchored by a bristling performance from the always solid Scanlen, is at its best when it hews to the combustible suspense of a teenage girl glimpsing her own instincts – for honesty, for autonomy, and most threateningly for pleasure. It’s ultimately less a portrait of a toxic relationship – that’s not the tone of Owen and Jem’s connection here – than a familiar battle of faith and feelings, intuition versus indoctrination, the fine line between sin and sublime.
Glance by glance, Jem is invariably drawn to Owen against the backdrop of shame-ridden conservatism. The two first reconnect on a stairwell outside church – Jem in snotty tears after a fellow congregant chastises her visible bra outline; Owen, recently returned from a missionary stint in Puerto Rico, the subject of gossip over why he and his wife (Jessamine Burgum) don’t have children yet. This is Duggar-type Christian fundamentalism – long skirts and covered shoulders, no social associations outside church and no secular culture.
The honeyed Southern summer setting, lushly captured by cinematographer Brian Lannin, feels expansive in a way Jem’s social and emotional futures do not. By day, she escapes into dance practice and solo bike rides at dusk, the air thick with humidity and crickets (characters are dripping in sweat on multiple occasions, often coinciding with a melting of control).
By night, she experiments with masturbation and curses her sinful hand. One afternoon, her strictly devout mother (Wrenn Schmidt) and father (Jimmi Simpson), a former secular musician and addict whose recovery is thornily bound up in faith, inform her that it’s time for her to court Owen’s painfully sheltered brother Ben (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams), and that’s that.
The Starling Girl is a 2023 American coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Laurel Parmet in her feature directorial debut. Starring Eliza Scanlen, Lewis Pullman, Jimmi Simpson, Wrenn Schmidt, and Austin Abrams, the film follows Jemima “Jem” Starling (Eliza Scanlen), a 17-year-old girl struggling to find her place within her Christian fundamentalist community in Kentucky.
The Starling Girl premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2023, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, and was theatrically released in the United States on May 12, 2023. Despite underperforming commercially, the film received critical acclaim, with particular praise for the performances of the cast and Parmet’s direction. At the 39th Independent Spirit Awards, Parmet received a nomination for Best First Screenplay.
The Starling Girl (2023)
Directed by: Laurel Parmet
Starring: Eliza Scanlen, Lewis Pullman, Jimmi Simpson, Wrenn Schmidt, Kyle Secor, Austin Abrams, Claire Elizabeth Green, Jessamine Burgum, Ellie May, Chris Dinner, Kieran Sitawi
Screenplay by: Laurel Parmet
Production Design by: Mollie Wartelle
Cinematography by: Brian Lannin
Film Editing by: Sam Levy
Costume Design by: Tora Eff
Set Decoration by: Meghan Glasper, John Ricketts
Art Direction by: Sydney Marquez
Music by: Lord Huron
MPAA Rating: R for some sexuality.
Distributed by: Bleecker Street
Release Date: January 21, 2023 (Sundance), May 12, 2023 (United States)
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