American Honey.

American Honey was the last movie on my to-watch list from 2016 that I hadn’t seen, put off by its running time (163 minutes) when there were so many other, shorter movies to see. It’s too long, which almost goes without saying, and the story doesn’t really gel until the final twenty minutes, but this is a star-making turn for neophyte Sasha Lane, and the meandering script still has some cogent points to make about the American teenaged underclass, enough that you might still want to tough this one out through the slow parts. The movie is available free on amazon prime or to rent on iTunes.

Lane, who was discovered by director Andrea Arnold while on spring break and then won the part after her audition, plays Star, a possibly 18-year-old girl who scavenges dumpsters for food, is regularly molested by her (step?)father, and watches two (half-)siblings because their mother is too busy getting drunk and line dancing to bother. A van of young adults traveling the country selling magazine subscriptions door to door stops in a parking lot right in front of her, when team leader Jake (Shia Laboeuf) flirts with her and recruits to join them. Star runs away the same evening, foisting the younger kids on their disinterested mother, and the remainder of the film follows the van of misfit boys and girls across several stops, focusing on the incipient relationship between Star and Jake – and the ongoing one between Jake and their boss, Krystal (Riley Keough, the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley).

Lane is a revelation in this role, stepping into it like a child actor who’s been on screen for years, switching effortlessly from false bravado to childlike neediness, emanating an inner strength shackled by her lack of any life experience or the self-confidence that comes from it. Lebro is convincing as Jake, but the character is so unlikeable – manipulative, greedy, amoral – that it’s hard to see why Star would remain attracted to him or desirous of his attentions after he has repeatedly taken advantage of her, lied to and in front of her, stolen, and even threatened several people with a gun (in the least believable scene of the film). If we’re just rehashing her childhood – girl from an abusive environment is attracted to abusive men – then we need some sort of growth for Star, character development she doesn’t really get from the script. And Krystal is as one-note a character as they come, a mere plot convenience who’s there to throw a wrench into the Jake-Star relationship.

The other fundamental problem with this movie is how joyless it is until the last couple of scenes. Even when the kids are supposed to be having fun, there’s nothing fun about these scenes; there’s often a Lord of the Flies vibe just under their surface. You can tell a story about kids with no direction and little hope yet still show their quotidian lives as having moments of happiness that eventually lose out to the bigger despair, but there just isn’t much of that here. Only when Star bottoms out and then runs into a family that reminds her of her own home life does she have a small epiphany that propels her forward even as the other characters remain the same. That may be the point – that for most of these kids, the same is all they’re going to get, and maybe we should pay more attention to this underclass so they don’t end up selling possibly-fake magazine subscriptions while riding around the country in the back of a van singing bad rap songs – but the story needs to go somewhere, and it doesn’t really get enough of an ending.

(One detail that bugged me: The van was full when Star joined, but later we see the crew picking up more recruits. So did they just dump some of the others? Or is the van actually a sort of clown car?)

Water recurs as a motif throughout the film, including in the final scene, in a way that I think was intentional, a symbol of rebirth but also of a primal need that ties everyone, regardless of wealth or poverty, together. (Thirst comes up several times in the movie, which I’m including as the same symbol as the water.) Star ends up taking a ride with a trucker – she’s too trusting – and they end up discussing how neither has ever seen the ocean. She slips into a puddle and has a momentary meltdown. And when she hits her nadir, she’s surrounded by oil, with no water in sight.

Will Leitch and Tim Grierson often refer to an old line of Gene Siskel’s, asking whether it would be more enjoyable to watch the movie or have dinner with the cast and crew. (At least, I think that’s the quote. If not, just go with it for now.) There is no question in my mind that dinner with the actors who play the kids in American Honey would be a more interesting, even educational experience. Arielle Holmes plays Pagan, but she herself spent several years as a homeless heroin addict on the streets of New York, eventually writing a memoir and starring in a movie about her own life. Arnold cast several other non professionals in the other roles; I can’t believe they wouldn’t collectively have a more interesting set of stories to tell me than the one told in this movie. Maybe she should have given us fewer characters but told more about the ones she shows, instead of using them as backdrop for the Star-crossed lovers’ broken romance.