A24 has become one of the most successful film studios of the 21st Century, despite their relatively recent entry into the distribution game. One of A24’s most successful areas of focus has been coming-of-age stories; films like Waves, Room, Lady Bird, The Spectacular Now, mid90s, Moonlight, and The Florida Project provided spotlights for filmmakers to explore the challenges of growing up amidst overwhelming circumstances. However, the studio’s most successful coming-of-age film is one that many have not seen.
American Honey tells the wild story of the teenage girl Star (Sasha Lane), who abandons her life with an abusive father to join a ragtag group of adolescent magazine sellers who travel cross-country together. The group’s leader, Krystal (Riley Keough), is enigmatic and has some reservations about Star; however, the charming hustler Jake (Shia Labeouf) instantly finds himself attracted to Star and gets her to join their crew. Over the course of an adventure across the Midwest, Star has to learn how to survive on her own when she never knows where their trip will take them next.
American Honey debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, and at 163 minutes, it’s among A24’s longest films. Directed with skill by the underrated filmmaker Andrea Arnold, American Honey deserves a place in the all-time canon of great coming-of-age stories.
Embracing Emotional Fluidity
Hollywood has traditionally veered away from telling LGBTQ+ stories on-screen, and while studios have gradually embraced more diverse representation in recent years, there is still a lot of work to be done. It’s often that those looking to see proper LGBTQ+ representation will have to look for indie movies, and American Honey does a great job at showing sexual fluidity among a diverse group of characters. Star questions what she wants out of her experiences as she’s drawn into many relationships across the course of her trip. Since her life up until that point had been completely controlled by her abusive father, she’s finally allowed to experiment and make decisions for herself.
What makes American Honey so exciting is that the crew doesn’t have a clear destination in mind; they simply travel to the places that they can find work, and stop at various cities to go on different adventures. The film does a great job at showing how quickly their schemes can become dangerous. At one point, Star attends a pool party with a group of older men that find her attractive; worried that the group will take advantage of her, Jake invades the house armed with a gun and forces Star to leave. However, some of their misadventures are more humorous. It’s particularly amusing to see how Jake and Star annoy members of an uptight religious community, who are shocked by their ragged clothing and colorful language.
Breakout Performances
While Lane has subsequently taken on more prominent roles in projects like Hellboy, Loki, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and Hearts Beat Loud, American Honey proved that she could carry the weight of a nearly three hour epic on her shoulders. Lane’s personable nature makes Star a compelling character who warrants the audience’s attention for such a long runtime. Star has learned to hide her emotions out of fear due to her abusive living situation, so simply being around so many expressive young people is a wild change of pace for her. It’s interesting to see Star gradually open up about some of the traumatic experiences in her life over the course of the trip. She shows reluctance when Jake starts selling drugs to children, as her mother had died of an overdose.
LaBeouf has faced criticism throughout his career, but he’s a genuinely talented actor whose off-screen persona has sadly gotten more attention than his performances; LaBeouf can’t be judged on the basis of Transformers or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, because he’s done much more interesting work since. Jake stands as one of his most complex characters. Jake is simply an adventurer who isn’t always sure how to admit his sincerity; he doesn’t realize that his affairs can put pressure on Star when they think about a serious relationship, and he only slowly understands that she has begun to feel in danger around him. The two have excellent chemistry during some of the more emotionally grueling sequences. Towards the end of the film, Star agrees to exchange sexual favors for money, and admits it to a shocked Jake. Jake’s heartbreaking reaction is one of the most devastating moments of the story.
Keough also does a great job with a character whose bluntness and demeanor could catch some off guard. Krystal establishes herself as the de facto decision maker of the group, and rarely provides any background on her upbringing to Jake or Star. It’s unclear what motivations drive her, which makes the film imminently rewatchable to examine the subtle nuances that Keough slips into her performance.
Stylistic and Indulgent Filmmaking
Arnold is a filmmaker who is not worried about conforming to strict narrative structures, which gained the admiration of film critics. Variety described it as “part dreamy millennial picaresque, part distorted tapestry of Americana and part exquisitely illustrated iTunes musical,” that is “constantly, engrossingly active, spinning and sparking and exploding in cycles like a Fourth of July Catherine wheel.” However, American Honey is not an example of style over substance. The Hollywood Reporter said “the film works best as a poignant character study, observing Star as she settles into her independence and figures out who she wants to be, framed by a vast physical landscape that stretches socioeconomically from privileged wealth to squalid poverty.”
American Honey allows its characters to simply live "in the moment," and spends time showing the small moments of beauty that stick within Star’s memory. Ultimately, it presents coming-of-age as a series of small moments that shape someone’s identity; it’s only at the end that the viewer feels like they’re able to understand Star as she celebrates and dances with fireworks in the background. Sadly, female filmmakers are rarely given the opportunity to bring these types of ambitious projects to life, but hopefully more viewers will recognize American Honey as one of the greatest coming-of-age movies of the 21st century.