When vanity is the catch-all accusation in her circle for the blasphemy of pleasure, what’s a naturally self-expressive person to do?īecause we’re seeing everything through Jem’s eyes - cinematographer Brian Lannin creating an almost vérité-documentary rigor on that front - patriarchy’s sinister hold feels ever-present, and Scanlen is excellent at the minute-to-minute thrill and agony of a situation that’s educating her fast in human frailty. Which in Scanlen’s scintillatingly layered portrayal are a tangy, foreshadowing mix of devotional guilt and hurt feelings. It’s a fragile happiness, though, when after the high of a performance she’s scolded for her sin-adjacent dancewear (a not-thick-enough dress top), and immediately needs to find some privacy so she can flush out some tears. In writer/director Laurel Parmet’s impressively nervy feature debut “The Starling Girl,” a devout 17-year-old in a fundamentalist Christian community begins to notice the divide between her increasingly bold sense of self and the well-policed demands of her insular, tightknit church, a quiet struggle made even more pronounced with the sudden kindling of desire.Īn obliging daughter, helpful sister to her younger sibs and joyful member of her church’s troupe of “worship dancing” young women, Jem Starling ( Eliza Scanlen) lives to glorify God, and, equally, loves to show it through dance. Sowing doubt in one’s agency has always been an insidiously formidable weapon. One of the greatest tools that authoritarian religious groups have to control congregants - especially women - is convincing them that their personality, their power, is a liability.
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