The Starling Girl firmly plants its flag in Karl Marx’s view of religion. An opiate of the masses, fundamentalist religious beliefs in conservative communities are THE only thing that matters. But there’s no way any human can live there whole life sinless like Jesus is written about in the Bible. The Starling Girl is about regular humans, especially women, and what happens to them when their “sins” get the better of them. Short answer: it’s not great.
Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) basically is your run of the mill 17 year old Kentucky high school girl. She likes being in dance troupe dancing for Jesus. She prays regularly to be a better person, supported by her strict mother Heidi (Wrenn Schmidt) and her more worldly dad Paul (Jimmi Simpson). The church loves her back, and Pastor Taylor (Kyle Secor) wants his son Ben (Austin Abrams) to court Jem in hopes of getting married one day soon. Jem goes along with this, because she has to, but also because it gives her time to be closer to her real crush, the pastor’s older son Owen (Lewis Pullman), recently returned from a trip to Puerto Rico.
The Starling Girl was clearly written by someone who didn’t grow up in one of these communities or amongst its people. What we get here is more a bullet points view of the repressive nature of one of these places because that’s what stood out to Laurel Parmet the director. The movie’s at it best showing religion being bad, particularly in small moments, such as when Jem goes in mental and emotional circles trying to justify why her actions are not sinful even though they contradict what her Bible tells her. Worlds like Jem’s have these little ways of keeping people tied to specific roles in society, and people like Jem and Paul have a hard time living their lives that strictly. Deep down, they know something’s not right, but they don’t have either the will power or real power to do something about it, and are basically…stuck. I wish the movie showed this society in a more nuanced light, how sometimes you can find purpose and a desire to help people, but because that’s not The Starling Girl’s main point, complexity has to get pushed to the side in favor of heavier straightforward melodrama.
The performances really take the bullet points of The Starling Girl’s script and make them more interesting. Eliza Scanlen took what she learned on the Little Women set and starts this new phase of her acting career. Her Jem is wonderfully human and messy, constantly desiring to break out and scream but also held back by the rules society has seared into her. The scenes between her and Jimmi Simpson are electric, as both of them recognize they share similar souls, and find a way to show the pervasive melancholy that can exist in a life not fully committed to the fundamentalist cause. Lewis Pullman could easily have been the misogynist fall guy here, but he does a decent job showing Owen is as messy and human as Jem is, but also too stupid to see his own privileges in this society.
The Starling Girl is at its best an acting showcase. I wish we had one more pass at the script because there’s something good in there, but it never quite achieves the power it is going for. At least for Eliza Scanlen, Lewis Pullman, and Jimmi Simpson, we see they can be more than just incredible supporting players, they can rise to the occasion and really lead stories too.