Recensioni de* critic*

This wilful truncating of possibilities for coverage, découpage, and a more flexible directorial "regard" can seem, at moments, defiantly Bressonian. But, as happens even with the Dardennes, the adoption of such a strict parti pris can also create a host of narrational problems (on the level of: who exactly is doing what here?).

An epic film shot almost exclusively handheld and in 4:3; a coming-of-age proclamation that's uncannily wise beyond its years; a road movie that eschews genre clichés... For me, it's tied with Kelly Reichardt's CERTAIN WOMEN as my favorite film of 2016; both are about women from small places who lead small lives, but with big hearts.

I found so much beauty in those young ones, the filmmaking, just the way Arnold allows them to take to the road and _feel_ it, feel new love, feel fear, feel their sex, that the celluloid almost seems tangible. Like you could touch this movie. It's that vibrant and alive.

I admired this picture for a number of things, including Arnold's disinclination to sentimentalize her protagonist. And then in the final fifth she goes and sentimentalizes her protagonist. Oh well.

The British film that totally nailed it this year in both aesthetic and content was Andrea Arnold's much anticipated American Honey. If great filmmakers were considered national treasures, Arnold would surely be on the shortlist... Arnold marries a naturalistic cinematic beauty with the harsh realities of social deprivation. The film is worthy of high praise and I consider it a modern masterpiece.

As American Honey rambles along, blending a ruralized Ashcan lyricism with Arnold's familiarly tender metaphoric nature imagery (including butterflies, insects, and dogs), it makes too literal its diegetic and extradiegetic use of pop songs—mostly in the trap music, country, and hip-hop genres. It is seldom a good idea for a filmmaker to illustrate an emotion or an event with a song chosen for its pertinence to the narrative, simply because it undercuts the power of the images.

The film works in large part because of Lane's anonymity, and also because of Arnold's nonjudgmental framing. A lesser director might have mounted Star's story as a morality play, while a more prurient male filmmaker might have viewed her as a sex object instead of the agent of her own story and owner of her own desires. Despite an implied history of sexual abuse and neglect, Star never seems like a victim of circumstance.... She is irreducible, and thus interesting.

It could, admittedly, have used more than a few cuts itself, but you can see why Arnold didn't: this is a film about a journey, physical and figurative, without a destination and could never have been a tight 90 minutes. That said, Arnold's sparing use of humour, including touches like a nine-year-old girl sweetly singing Dead Kennedy's ‘I Kill Children', prevents the film from dragging too much.

Star's essential virtue, taking care of neglected children and dreaming of a trailer and family of her own, distinguishes her from her fellow travellers, chasing paper money down the highway. Within a glittering collage of soaring music, soft light and writhing bodies, this brilliant film draws the outline of a bleak economic landscape.

Since its premiere at Cannes Film Festival this year American Honey has had critics fuming: many see it as a self indulgent, aimless extravaganza about young, whackily glamorous people on a road to nowhere. But Andrea Arnold, previously responsible for a racially reflective adaptation of Wuthering Heights in 2011, gets to the core of contemporary juvenile experience – in a country that relegates many people like Star to the margins. Their drifting desires are the fuel American Honey runs on.

It's a profoundly banal point of view, made all the more dire by a punishing 163-minute runtime. The film's attempted intersection of pop, stylized fantasy, sketchy feminism, and class warfare is basically cribbed from the far more electric Spring Breakers, but with an added, self-sabotaging layer of seriousness.

The movie's empathetic power moves backward—it arises in retrospect and in the abstract, checking off its truthful and perceptive list of afflictions and responses. Seen as it unfolds, it simplifies and gratifies and, in so doing, condescends both to its poor characters and to its middle-class spectators.