AMERICAN HONEY. Deliberately Incomplete Story

In American Honey, eighteen-year-old Star has it pretty rough from the very beginning. We meet her as she rummages through trash in search of food. She briskly digs through the garbage in a dumpster and hands whatever is still edible to her nephews. She is raising children who aren’t her own, living with an overbearing partner who abuses alcohol and most likely sexually exploits her. Kansas, bathed in sunlight, looks profoundly bleak.

Star has grit and determination. She wants to break free—really, in any way at all. She wants to finally achieve something, to have something to be proud of, to enjoy life. One day she meets the charming Jake (Shia LaBeouf), who travels across America with a group of young people, going door to door selling magazine subscriptions. The team of canvassers is a tight-knit crew: partygoers, chatterboxes, social and direct people. They come from practically all over the United States, from west to east—a mix of accents and personalities. People without a permanent address, for whom the feeling of freedom is oxygen.

That is exactly what Star needs. She sneaks out of the house through a window and joins the group of sellers. She undergoes training under Jake’s supervision (he is impulsive and loud) and, of course, becomes entangled with him in a toxic relationship. The plot is sketchy. We travel from town to town, knocking on doors. It’s an opportunity to take stock of the citizens of small-town America.

We enter wealthy WASP homes, the residences of three Texans working at a refinery. In parallel, the relationship between Star and Jake develops. It’s a well-acted, sensibly written, and convincing love story—full of madness, honesty, shouting, and extreme emotions. Shia LaBeouf and Sasha Lane look great together on screen; there is chemistry between them—two committed performances. Both are very natural and direct.

Director Andrea Arnold is particularly concerned with building atmosphere. The film is a road movie—a road with no destination. It’s about capturing the idea of freedom within the frame. The filmmaker doesn’t rush the narrative; the film runs nearly three hours. Arnold loosely ties threads together, often drifts into small digressions, and turns the camera toward the surrounding nature. It’s with nature that Star seems most deeply connected. Especially charming are the moments when the heroine gently catches wasps banging against windows and releases them outside—a subtle allegory of what she herself needs from life.

At times the film takes on a semi-documentary form; the image often shakes and slips out of focus. The story is told as if the cinematographer were one of the characters. It’s hard to tell whether all the scenes were directed and staged, or whether Arnold went with the flow and improvised with a group of young actors. Thanks to this, the film brims with energy, refreshing spontaneity, and force.

Shia LaBeouf once again proves he is a charismatic screen presence who commands attention. He’s an actor who chooses his scripts wisely and, for some time now, has been in control of his career—engaging in interesting projects and bringing a great deal of himself to them. LaBeouf successfully and consistently breaks away from the image of the guy from Transformers. It seems he has checked out of Hollywood.

But the real standout is Lane. Star is extraordinarily natural—in her facial expressions, gestures, and in conveying a full spectrum of emotions. I probably like most the scenes where she drifts away from her fellow travelers and is left alone—such as in the wonderful open ending, lyrical and intriguing. The film is a deliberately incomplete, inexhaustive, and enigmatic story, guaranteeing more questions and doubts at the end than clear answers.