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Canberra Today 25°/28° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘American Honey’ (MA) ***

americanhoney-movie_1ENGLISH writer/director Andrea Arnold’s film has a sketchy plot, a mainly pickup cast of young adults and a running time of 163 minutes.

“American Honey” is actress Sasha Lane’s debut film, playing Star, its central character.

Much of the action seems unscripted. Characters are defined more by implication than hard detail. Society has not so much rejected them as they have rejected society.

Crossing middle America in a rent-a-bus to the next small town where they will fan out in two-person teams to sell magazine subscriptions, singing is about all that’s available to break the monotony. Much of it might easily have been dropped in the waste-bin. The songs its young adults sing are often incomprehensible. The noise closely resembles the out-of-tune ill-voicings of a footy team roaring out the club anthem. I could detect only one exception – a pop-song hymn of cynical praise for an idealised America.

The film is about young people who have rejected family, community, society, morality. They are liars, tricksters employed to extract money from housewives, oil-rig workers, anybody living barely one economic rung above theirs. It’s depressing as hell. Those kids enjoy the unrestrained lifestyle. And that, together with its propinquity with reality, is why putting a social illness front and centre and defying society to cure it merits a look. At its end, Star is lucky to be neither injured in a hospital bed nor pregnant. We wonder what her future will be and fear it will be the same as her past.

At Dendy

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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