Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is a devout young dancer in her Kentucky church’s troupe.  Her parents, Paul (Jimmi Simpson) and Heidi (Wrenn Schmidt), are excited to begin courtship talks with the Taylor family.  They introduce her to Ben (Austin Abrams), a sweet but awkward teen with the weight of expectation on his shoulders to live up to the impact equal to his older brother, Owen’s (Lewis Pullman), mission trips.  With Owen back home, the community is abuzz with excitement before he goes back to Puerto Rico, but no one is more enamored with him than Jem. 

Written and directed by Laurel Parmet, The Starling Girl is her debut feature that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic competition.  It received a limited theatrical release from Bleecker Street Media, but the coming-of-age drama following Jem as she picked away at the cracks of her fundamentalist community failed to make an impact with audiences in part because it only ever reached a maximum of 114 screens.  Parmet cited that the film is based somewhat on her own romantic experiences growing up; memories that she began to reexamine as she carried out research work in a fundamentalist group in Oklahoma.  The result is a film that feels deeply personal but also exploratory, and with both heart and brains on the page, we follow Jem through a fateful summer as she crosses into adulthood even though she is still just seventeen. 

Jem’s crucible begins with minor trials such as the pointing out from another congregation member that her bra is visible through her shirt, and notably, blame is also placed on Heidi for this error. Her perceived shortcomings and the community’s response to them slowly grow in intensity, though the threat of an arranged marriage is always looming like a storm cloud over the film. Scanlen, through the nature of the role, is asked to continually humble herself in front of the lens, but notably, Parmet is coming at this from a questioning angle to make sure that audiences feel the same discomfort that Jem does among her peers and elders. We should feel uncomfortable at the drawing of attention to her bra, not done so in a helpful way, but a crude way as if her mistake has brought the stain of sin into their house of God. Later, Jem will be scolded for her choreography, daring to turn in such a way that allegedly sexualizes her figure. Again, these are teenagers and this correction is not made to protect them from the peering gaze of the men in the congregation but rather to punish Jem. Her work will be further belittled for employing the very basic tactic of adding visual layers to the stage pictures as now the dancers are not all equal. This litany of little transgressions brings the weight of the world crashing down on us, suffocating us in the same way that Jem is being suffocated and each verbal reminder still stings like a lash. 

It is ironic, then, that when the film begins to explore Jem’s larger sins, the narrative feels less powerful and scathing. After a very strong opening half hour, the clandestine romance between Jem and the much older Owen begins to take shape, and while the film never dulls the danger of this situation, the conventional drama of infidelity is well worn and the script lets Owen off easy by never really bringing in the statutory nature of this relationship into focus, nor does it address meaningfully the power imbalance. Parmet is not necessarily condoning this romance, but when looking at this next to the similarly demographiced affair which Sean Baker centers his Red Rocket (2021) around, it seems to let Owen off easy.  In that film, Mikey (Simon Rex) returns to his dusty Texas hometown after a stint in LA filming porn. He meets the much younger Strawberry (Suzanna Son), and with a head full of delusions about the film industry, the two begin to engage and eventually run away together. While Mikey may “get the girl” at the end, it is very much a monkey paw situation in which his life has been ruined in the pursuit of her and though Owen’s life is similarly upended when he and Jem make their dash towards freedom together in the final moments, it plays out more akin to a victory. 

The Starling Gril is a peak behind the curtain of a close-knit community, not as searing or showy as Sarah Polley’s Women Talking (2022) which examines the proprietary role that women find themselves filling in male-led, religious communities. The major difference is that Polley starts with a singular issue and through that, examines a broader array of topics whereas Parmet starts off broadly and tries to factor down from there. It is an effective approach in its own right, but the upside-down nature of it means that many things are introduced that do not then have their moment of payoff. Polley could afford a few loose ends as the debate on whether or not to leave the community offered to ability to go off on tangents and circle back to the topic at hand, but Parment’s tangents were worked into the foundation of her narrative.

One of the major examples of this is how Jem’s father, Paul, is struggling with a relapse into alcohol use when news of his friend and former bandmate’s passing reaches the community. Seen by Jem, sitting nude on his bed, and admonished by her mother that he is working through difficult feelings, it almost appears that Parmet is implying that Paul has “prayed the gay away” and may be struggling as a repentant homosexual. It is not truly expanded on, but Parmet does not seem to have a strong faith in the stability of marriage in this community between the way that Jem and her peers and sisters talk about the arrangements and Owen’s open disdain towards Misty (Jessamine Burgum), his own wife who he will admit they married too young. The unexplored avenues dilute the otherwise full world that she has created.

There is still a lot to be admired about the film, even though Parmet’s closeness to the subject may have watered down the ultimate impact of the story, when seen for what it truly is – the story of Jem’s liberation – it actually works quite well. Brian Lannin shoots the film in a muted way from many of the more traditionally inspirational, religious films lending a sense of familiarity but is just askew enough to cause some tension in our interpretation of the palate. Similarly, Ben Schneider’s score, when focused on, will lend itself well to the nature of the narrative working in themes and motifs of worship music, but it is not as imposing as some scores tend to be, so it works, unassumingly, in the background, simply tapping us on the shoulder instead of beating us over the head about the emotional register of the various scenes. The restraint here is perfectly metered so that it puts us in that same transitional mindset as Jem, and each time Sam Levy lets a closeup shot of Scanlen linger, that same fear of redefining one’s life washes over audiences in an incredibly effective way. Parmet has a great eye for style and a firm grip on the wheel to set and steady the tone, so as she continues to grow in her career, she will certainly be an artist to watch.