American Honey

Ditching gritty British drama to shoot an improvised road movie on the freeways of America, acclaimed realist director Andrea Arnold follows her muddy and constricted take on Wuthering Heights with an exhilarating celebration of modern youth. Newcomer Sasha Lane plays Star, an 18-year-old girl left in charge of two younger siblings by her absentee mother. After a chance meeting in a supermarket car park with the charismatic Jake (Shia LaBeouf), a salesman with a magazine subscriptions team, Star walks out on her family and heads for an adventure on the road, under the watchful eye of team leader Krystal (the sensational Riley Keough). At 162 minutes, American Honey expects you to settle in for the long haul, and Arnold's roving camera certainly takes the scenic route. But despite the arty flourishes and repetitions, this is a heady, intoxicating experience, interspersing the blurry hedonism of youth with jarring, sharply etched vignettes that remind us just how beautifully this director works with actors.