By night, she experiments with masturbation and curses her sinful hand. By day, she escapes into dance practice and solo bike rides at dusk, the air thick with humidity and crickets (characters are dripping in sweat on multiple occasions, often coinciding with a melting of control). The honeyed Southern summer setting, lushly captured by cinematographer Brian Lannin, feels expansive in a way Jem’s social and emotional futures do not. This is Duggar-type Christian fundamentalism – long skirts and covered shoulders, no social associations outside church and no secular culture. The two first reconnect on a stairwell outside church – Jem in snotty tears after a fellow congregant chastises her visible bra outline Owen, recently returned from a missionary stint in Puerto Rico, the subject of gossip over why he and his wife (Jessamine Burgum) don’t have children yet. Glance by glance, Jem is invariably drawn to Owen against the backdrop of shame-ridden conservatism.
It’s ultimately less a portrait of a toxic relationship – that’s not the tone of Owen and Jem’s connection here – than a familiar battle of faith and feelings, intuition versus indoctrination, the fine line between sin and sublime.
The Starling Girl, anchored by a bristling performance from the always solid Scanlen, is at its best when it hews to the combustible suspense of a teenage girl glimpsing her own instincts – for honesty, for autonomy, and most threateningly for pleasure. Parmet succeeds more on the former than the latter.
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