Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic From “Saved!” to “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” Sundance movies tend to paint fundamentalist Christians as severe, cult-like zealots, hellbent on brainwashing the next generation.
While such portrayals can certainly be cathartic for those scarred by conservative upbringings, it’s a refreshing change to see this milieu treated with the level of nuance that Laurel Parmet brings to “The Starling Girl.” Set in a small Kentucky town where morality is strictly enforced, Parmet’s promising, evenhanded debut focuses on a religious teen (“Little Women” star Eliza Scanlen) who’s never had reason to question her faith, until a crush on her handsome youth pastor (Lewis Pullman) awakens her sexuality and scandalizes the community.
For the adults in this repressive rural enclave, organized religion seems to provide the discipline and structure they seek.
But for 17-year-old Jem Starling, their values are starting feel like a straitjacket. Jem dutifully honors her father (Jimmi Simpson) and mother (Wrenn Schmidt), but her parents are pressuring her to court a pimple-faced fellow parishioner named Ben (Austin Abrams) — seemingly the last person she’d want as a husband.
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