Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A restless teenager escapes her troubled home and joins a traveling crew of young drifters selling magazines across the American Midwest. Immersed in a world of reckless partying, risky hustles, and fleeting romances, she searches for freedom and belonging on the open road.
Andrea Arnold's sprawling 163-minute odyssey through the American Midwest is a genuinely singular piece of cinema — shot in boxy 4:3 aspect ratio by Robbie Ryan with stunning, tactile naturalism that captures both the beauty and desperation of flyover country. Sasha Lane's raw, unaffected debut performance anchors the film, and the ensemble of non-professional actors lends it an almost documentary authenticity that few road movies achieve. The plot is deliberately episodic and picaresque rather than conventionally structured, which gives it a hypnotic, drifting quality that suits the material but may frustrate viewers expecting narrative momentum. Where the film falters most noticeably is its ending, which trails off inconclusively — though intentionally so, it leaves little sense of resolution or earned transformation for Star's arc. The novelty is high because Arnold's European sensibility applied to a very American milieu, combined with the casting approach and the immersive, sensory filmmaking style, produces something genuinely difficult to compare to any other American film.