Home Movie Reviews The Starling Girl Review: Parmet Delicately Balances Abuse Vs. Agency [Sundance]

The Starling Girl, even with its unsettling themes about abuse, is a triumphant effort about finding love within.

Eliza Scanlen as Jem in The Starling Girl

The Starling Girl stars Sharp Objects breakout actress Eliza Scanlen as a 17-year-old struggling to define her place within her fundamentalist Christian community. It’s uncomfortable and unnerving yet revealing in the way it centers a woman’s truth when everything is stacked against her freedom. Writer-director Laurel Parmet draws from her own personal journey with guilt with respect to relationships with men, appropriately exploring themes of abuse, self-discovery, and empowerment. And even in the most discomforting moments, director Parmet finds a way to delicately balance morally complex issues. The Starling Girl, even with its unsettling themes about abuse, is a triumphant effort about finding love within.

The story follows Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) as she navigates life in her Christian community in rural Kentucky. Torn between her greatest joy, the church dance group, and a burgeoning awareness of her own sexuality, Jem finds life to be more challenging. Soon, her mother Heidi (Wrenn Schmidt) urges Jem to begin the courting phase of her life to prepare to be a submissive wife to family friend Ben Taylor (Austin Abrams). But amidst all the confusion, Jem finds comfort in her youth pastor Owen Taylor (Lewis Pullman) and begins a rebellious affair with him. As the feelings of shame and guilt begin to overwhelm her, Jem seeks guidance from God through prayer as she battles with what to do next.

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The Starling Girl is the kind of film that would immediately conjure up feelings of unease and disapproval from audiences for its content alone. There’s the strict religious community that confines women to solely being wives and child bearers. In addition, the story is centered around an inappropriate relationship between a minor and older man while the central female character undergoes a sexual awakening. Yet within the exploration of these uncomfortable themes, Parmet constructs an extremely delicate showcase of self-discovery. She structures her script with nuance, realizing that two things can be true: Abuse can exist in a relationship with lopsided power dynamics and young women can explore their sexuality with authority and agency.

Told entirely from Jem’s perspective, The Starling Girl sufficiently lets viewers in on her joys, passions, and frustrations — factoring in the confusions that may come along with experiencing the final years of adolescence. Among these encounters, the film serves as a great reminder to value self-love over seeking it in others to build confidence, whether that be through parents, friends, or lovers. To capture this lesson through Jem, Parmet’s nuanced script balances the thrills of a forbidden love with the complication of religion and patriarchal views at the center. And thanks to her elegant direction, viewers may find themselves rooting for Jem to choose the best decision for herself.

As morally complicated as The Starling Girl’s script is, it comes with characters who are equally complex and deserve balanced scrutiny. Scanlen leads the cast and stands out as Jem, giving a convincing performance as she conveys various emotions like guilt, joy, shame, and devastation. If one look could reveal everything one might need to know about a character, Scanlen’s expressions offer a plethora of glimpses into Jem’s tantalizing world. She commands the camera effortlessly in this role, positioning herself as one of the most promising young actors of her generation.

Parmet’s sensitive coming-of-age story is a gentle showcase about the potential dangers that come with organized religion keen on patriarchal views. Parmet’s script assesses the concept of self-discovery intertwined in an intoxicating yet inappropriate relationship. A great balance of discomfort and delicacy when dissecting Jem’s impetuous albeit courageous attempt at sexual and mental liberation, The Starling Girl does well with what so many of its counterparts fail to do: It recognizes that sexual exploitation/abuse and agency are not mutually exclusive.

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The Starling Girl premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival on January 21. The film is 116 minutes long and not yet rated.