Cannes Report: On the Very Long Road With the Divisive 'American Honey'
Director Andrea Arnold’s American Honey is a nearly three-hour road trip through the American Midwest that unfolds like a fever dream/nightmare of gorgeous vistas and abject poverty, junky strip malls and blazing oil fields. It provoked some seriously strong reactions after its first press screening at Cannes on Saturday night: There were plenty of snap raves on Twitter and more than a few brutal pans. (Emotions were so strong, there seemed to be conflicting reports on whether there were both boos and applause as the credits rolled. I confess, I did not hear any boos, but the applause was muted.) It’s a wildly frustrating film that’s still admirable with its stunning cinematography (courtesy of Robbie Ryan), its unnerving atmosphere, and its audacity to dispense with most signposts of plot and instead focus on the throbbing backbeat of a car radio in a van full of rowdy, horny, aimless teenagers who are driving. And driving. And driving.
It’s really the story of the deadest of dead-end jobs. We meet Star (newcomer Sasha Lane), a dumpster-diving teenager with a young brother and sister in tow and a father who can’t keep his hands to himself. It’s no surprise then that she jumps at the first offer she gets. In a chance encounter at a Kmart, she meets Jake (Shia LaBeouf) and his tribe, who start dancing at the checkout to Rihanna’s “We Found Love.” (Arnold is fully attuned to the ecstatic joys of pop music, whether it’s hip-hop, country, or rock.) She and Jake flirt, and he offers her a job selling magazine subscriptions on the road to people who don’t read magazines anymore. Star boards the van and joins the motley crew of heedless kids all running away from something, with no plan in mind beyond the next rest stop. They’re lorded over by Krystal (a sharp, funny Riley Keough doing a Mary-Louise Parker deadpan), who runs the “sales team” like a low-rent mob boss in a Confederate flag bikini.
As far as the plot goes, that’s mostly it. Supporting characters drift in and out without leaving much of an impression, and sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Arnold (a Brit who previously directed the 2009 drama Fish Tank) has keen insights into America or just a good-enough grasp of the archetypes: the suburban cowboys, the Mountain Dew-guzzling kids, the bougie evangelical Christians. There’s too much of everything: too many scenes of the kids grooving to yet another song, too many shots of insects crawling, and too much LaBeouf, who needed some reining in (and, perhaps, a haircut: Jake has a ridiculous rat-tail braid that looks distractingly fake.) Still, for all of those flaws, it’s hard to deny that Arnold’s vision is a hypnotic one: Star emerges as an almost fairy-tale heroine, a Little Red Riding Hood in dreadlocks and short shorts climbing into cars with potential wolves. It’s an open road that stays with you, even after you take the exit.
(Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival)
