God's Whispers

Any time a plane even half-full of argentines touches down on the runway at Ezeiza International Airport in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, applause and hollering and general uproar sweeps through the cabin. On friday night at the cineworld on fulham road as the credits rolled two hours forty three minutes into American Honey, my brother and i channeled the latin in us and hollered and applauded and brrrap'd from the far right of row G, causing the rest of Screen 3 to fumble about in the darkness for their coats and scarves with extra-specially furrowed brows. I think one person joined in. With good reason.

Permit me to get a little Barry Norman about this.

American Honey is sick.

I can't remember being made this happy by a film since Pride Rock went apeshit for the second time.

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One reviewer saw it and coined the word Youthquake. Check out the trailer.

Sasha Lane who plays the main character Star had no previous acting experience at all, she is absolute fire. The director Andrea Arnold who did Red Road and Fish Tank found her on a beach somewhere and convinced her to come for a casting.

The sex scenes are incredible.

One moment sticks out most of all. A shot near the end in a van where QT this heavy-set girl turns around and an extended smile breaks across her face, that captures the whole thing in the shell of a nut.

People say it's too long. People say it's disjointed. That it rambles on. Two sets of people walked out half way through. And i spent almost three hours with my mouth wide open forcing my bladder to seven times it's natural size because i couldn't handle missing any part of it. That two people can have such different reactions to the same thing is weird. Especially when there is no room for debate. Subjective opinion needs to step aside on this one. Not coming into this club with that kind of footwear sir, dark shoes only.

There's so much to this film. The silences, the close-ups of faces, the spaces in between. The music. Everything. It won't be as good as any expectation i may have stoked up. But i totally fell in love with it.