By Joanne Sargent
Contributor
The Starling Girl, this week’s Film Society movie, as described by pluggedin.com, is about “a young woman trying to pry herself away from beneath the thumb of rigid religiosity.”
Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, it’s a complex portrait of the religious tension between a girl questioning her path in life and her mother, a true believer following a predetermined plan and refusing to acknowledge any other options.
Jem Starling is a clever and rebellious teen living in a small, deeply fundamentalist Christian community in Kentucky where life is about obedience — first to your parents, then to your husband. Jem is 17, the eldest daughter, therefore expected to take care of her siblings and the household and to soon marry and start a family of her own – her mother is desperate to set her up with their pastor’s son Ben.
Jem’s single joy in life is dancing in the church’s worship dance troupe — she has a passion for dance and cannot help but want something more out of her life and to rail against the many ways in which women are conditioned to behave a certain way.
Her life is upended by the return of intriguing, but married, youth pastor Owen who takes the vulnerable teen under his wing. Jem and Owen are attracted to each other, begin meeting in secret, and Jem is the centre of attention for the first time in her life. Owen exploits her, using God to convince Jem that what they’re doing is right. We feel her confusion and her guilt and how she oscillates between her desire for Owen and her desire to be her own person and free from the shame and restriction she feels in her community.
As Jem unravels the grip of religion and a toxic, forbidden relationship, we feel empathy not just for her, but for every young woman, religious or not, who struggles to know herself and gives in to her desire to be seen.
The Starling Girl plays at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 20 at the Classic.
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