American Honey (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

American Honey (2016) – A. Arnold

I wonder if the title American Honey (2016) has anything to do with A Taste of Honey (1961) which I just happened to watch a few weeks ago?  The earlier British film follows a teenage girl who, due to neglect by her mum, ends up having to make her own way in the world, navigating the onset of adulthood (including sexual relations and then pregnancy) as best she can.  The director of American Honey, Andrea Arnold, is British and (although the new film does include a song of the same title by country group Lady Antebellum) I suspect that the use of the word honey here is no coincidence.  After all, the new film also follows a teenage girl who, seemingly abandoned by her parents and living in a kind of hell in Oklahoma, must find her own way in the world.  She joins a circus-like “mag crew” (door-to-door magazine sellers) made up of other lost kids, headed by Riley Keough (Elvis’s granddaughter), only a few years older but a tough businesswoman.  But maybe not a successful one, because it doesn’t seem as though these kids actually sell many magazines.  Instead, their life is one continuous rather chaotic party (with hip-hop the music of choice, despite the title track).  Our heroine, Star (played by newcomer Sasha Lane), observes everything with a bit of distance, some querulousness, some disdain, but a genuine desire to belong.  She is especially thunderstruck by Jake, the chief sales-dude played by Shia LeBeouf, who seems really to have no moral compass.  Indeed, Star herself displays some very poor judgment, often willingly entering situations that contain real risks, especially for a young girl.  But director Arnold passes no judgment on these kids and this is not really a cautionary tale.  The (handheld) camera hovers around Lane, detailing her reactions in close-up, allowing the viewer to soak up the sensations she experiences (and this is a very sensual film, with heightened sights and sounds).  The acting is sometimes impressive and sometimes wet-behind-the-ears.  But the film is also too long (at 157 minutes) and, if it is really meant to be a snapshot of the American experience at this point in time, emphasising the under-class (as did the British Kitchen Sink films of the 1960s), then it seems rather narrow in scope.  In the end, both sad and exhilarating.