Laurel Parmet’s absorbing indie “The Starling Girl” has a 17-year-old girl (Eliza Scanlen) from a Christian fundamentalist community struggling to hide her affair with a youth pastor twice her age. Anchored by a fearless performance from Scanlen, this is a film that works best when it sets up the autonomy and pleasure of its religiously-driven lead character. However, it gets a tad too clunky when it tries to resolve the dramatic stakes at its conclusion. This is a film about desire, or, rather, the stifling of it in favor of shame. Parmet’s Film premiered at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival and is being released tomorrow in only a handful of NYC and L.A. theaters. It’s worth a look. [B]
Is Burr right? Will “Digger” be the ‘Big Lebowski’ of 2026, a misunderstood bomb that finds its audience on home video? ‘Lebowski’ is hardly alone: “Blade Runner,” “The Shining” and “Fight Club” all followed the same path.