The Starling Girl premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2023, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, and was given a limited theatrical release in the United States on May 12, 2023. 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.
Plot
17-year-old Jemima "Jem" Starling lives in a fundamentalist Christian community in Kentucky, and her parents Paul and Heidi expect Jem to be a model Christian for her four younger siblings. Jem's age necessitates that she begin the tradition of courting, but she is more interested in dancing as a member of her church's dance troupe. Jem's parents and Pastor Taylor arrange for his youngest son Ben to court her, a decision she reluctantly agrees to. Over the course of several days, Jem and Ben get to know each other, but it becomes evident that the two have nothing in common despite Ben developing feelings for Jem.
28-year-old Owen Taylor, the pastor's eldest son, has just returned to the community from doing missionary work with his wife Misty in Puerto Rico. When Jem learns the troupe might disband due to not having a leader, she asks Owen, who is in charge of church programs, if she can be appointed the leader, which he allows. She develops a crush on Owen and seeks ways to get closer to the older man, who is supportive of her passion for dance when others tell her she is doing it for vanity and not to praise God.
During one night when they are the only two people in the church building, they share a kiss and begin an illicit relationship. The following evening, Jem and Owen have sex for the first time in his car. Afterwards, Jem runs off into the lake and Owen gives chase. When Jem asks Owen if he thinks she is wicked, he replies he does not, and reasons that because he feels he can be himself around her, what they are doing cannot possibly be a sin. He also reveals that his marriage to Misty is an unhappy one because they married young and "misread the signs".
Jem's family situation becomes strained when Paul, an alcoholic, relapses. While alone with her dad one night, Jem learns he was a singer in a band prior to converting to Christianity. He still listens to an iPod, which he keeps hidden from Heidi and swears Jem to secrecy about. When Jem asks Paul if he misses his life as a musician, he insists that his sacrifice was part of God's plan. The troupe is asked to show their routine to Misty, who critiques the performance and says it needs to be changed so it is not centered on Jem. An angered Jem reluctantly complies, and at the conclusion of dance practice, she keys Misty's car in retaliation.
The following afternoon, Jem visits Owen at his house, where he confronts Jem about the car and warns her that any reckless behavior could risk exposing their affair. Jem apologizes and the two start kissing and undressing, but when Misty arrives home early, Owen takes Jem to the bathroom and tells her not to come out until he says so. An impatient Jem crawls out the window of his house, only to be seen by her younger sister Rebecca. Later that night before bedtime, Jem tells Rebecca not to tell anyone what she saw, but she ignores her.
Paul catches Jem lying to him about where she goes at night, punishing her by making her quit the troupe. During their argument, Jem accuses him of lying as well, prompting him to slap her. Jem visits Owen in his car, where she tells him about Rebecca catching her leaving his house. A panicked Owen to decides to take a break from the relationship. Jem pleads with him not to and says she thinks it's time for them to go public with their relationship, but Owen angrily rebukes her and drives off, leaving Jem devastated.
That night, Paul appears at Jem's bedside and apologises for their argument, shortly before he collapses from an overdose on Heidi's pills and is taken to hospital. The next morning Heidi tells Jem he is in a coma, before sending her to a church event despite her daughter's protests. Jem and Ben are spending time together at the party when she notices Owen, who once again rebuffs her when she tries speaking with him. Upon seeing the troupe dance to her routine, Jem angrily runs off into the woods, breaking down in tears. Concerned, Ben catches up to Jem and begs her to talk to him despite her repeated pleas for solitude. When Ben tries to bring her back to the party, she almost kills him by drowning him in the lake. An angered Ben dismisses Jem as a psycho and leaves, ending their courtship
Upon returning home, Jem is confronted about the affair by Heidi, who found a burner phone given to Jem by Owen in her daughter's belongings. Pastor Taylor visits the Starling residence to talk with Heidi and Jem, pointedly interrogating Jem about when her relationship with Owen started and her culpability. When Jem asks about Owen, the pastor says Owen doesn't want to be there and that his life is ruined. According to the pastor, Owen claims it was Jem who tempted him and "inhibited his ability to control himself". Heidi and the pastor decide that Jem must be sent to a disciplinary camp as punishment for her behaviour.
At church, Jem is asked to recant her sins in front of everyone. All the church members, including Owen, approach Jem to say, "I forgive you." Jem visits her father in hospital, with Paul showing no signs of improvement. As Jem prepares to leave for the camp, she is approached by Owen, who has left Misty and declares his love for Jem, wanting to take her with him to Puerto Rico. A furious Heidi punches Owen and orders him to stay away from her daughter, but when Heidi tells Jem to go back inside the house, Jem defies her mother and gets into Owen's car. The two drive away as a hysterical Heidi pleads with Jem not to leave.
After taking up residence at a motel, Owen apologizes to Jem for his betrayal and she forgives him. Owen asks Jem about her father, but she tells him she doesn't want to think about it. Later that night, Jem discovers her father's iPod in her jacket pocket. The following morning, Jem decides to leave Owen without telling him and takes his car. She drives to a Memphis bar her father told her he used to perform at with his band. While there, a song plays and she happily dances alone to it, losing herself in the dance.
Parmet began writing the script in 2017.[6] Her idea for the story came from research work she did in Oklahoma about Christian fundamentalist communities. From spending time with the women of these communities and attending their church, Parmet "learned that [the women] believed that their desires were sinful. There was a woman in their church who had had an affair with a church authority member and she received the blame instead of him. When I first heard these stories, I was like, 'Their world is so backwards. I’m so glad that my life’s not like this.' But the more I thought about it, the more I saw how much we actually had in common, in terms of how we grew up, our relationships with our bodies and what society teaches us to feel about our desires."[6] Parmet also drew from her own experiences in a relationship she had as a teenager, saying she "decided that I wanted to tell a story looking back at my experience and set it in a world that, while extreme and specific, has so much in common with the culture at large.”[6][7]
The film was shot in the area of Louisville, Kentucky.[6] Production took place from May 16 to June 17, 2022.[8]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 89 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Sensitively and intelligently crafted by writer-director Laurel Parmet, The Starling Girl is a well-told coming-of-age story centering around a young woman's struggles with her spiritual faith."[15]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[16]
Critics lauded the performances and Parmet's direction. Katie Walsh of TheWrap wrote, "Parmet’s strong script and surety behind the camera navigates the audience through this complicated story of religion and sexuality, patriarchy and power, brought to eerily accurate life by the ensemble of excellent actors. Scanlen, who is always tremendous, from Little Women to Babyteeth, holds the center with ease, while Pullman proves his chops in this complex role. But Schmidt (whose accent and cadence is spot on) and Simpson just about steal the show in their supporting roles as the steely, severe Heidi and deteriorating Paul."[17]
David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a grade of B+ and wrote though the film "tells a tale as old as time — the broad strokes of its story about the affair between a naïve teenage girl and a married older man who swears that he’ll leave his wife adhere to convention from start to finish...the power of this sensitive and devilishly detailed coming-of-age drama is rooted in the friction that it finds between biblical paternalism and modern personhood. While young women have always been taught to be ashamed of their desires...Parmet’s self-possessed debut is uncommonly well-attuned to how garbled that gospel might sound to a God-loving girl who’s been raised amid the echoes of a secular culture."[18] In The Hollywood Reporter, Jourdain Searles wrote, "The Starling Girl is a complex, often disturbing portrait of the way women have been pressured to shrink themselves and pass on that shame to their daughters. Somewhere inside them they know it breeds unhappiness, but for them it’s a small price to pay for admittance into the kingdom of Heaven."[19]
In The Guardian, Adrian Horton wrote Parmet succeeds in "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."[4]Collider's Maggie Boccella wrote, "The Starling Girl is steeped with empathy, not just for Jem, but for every young woman, religious or not, who struggles to know herself and gives in to the desire to be seen, no matter the voyeur — just to feel alive, and like they matter."[20]
The Film Stage's Michael Frank wrote, "For those with a religious background, the elements of dread, wielding power over our own upbringing, our own residual guilt that sticks with one long after they’ve stopped going to church will be well-recognized. For others, it’ll be a strong showing from an up-and-coming director with two terrific, mostly quiet lead performances. Both perspectives elevate the film above standard fare depicting the dangers of fundamentalism."[21]
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