Review of American Honey (2016) by Bill P — 31 Oct 2016

If you've ever worked in a tele-sales, or even door-to-door this film will surely show you things that you saw and felt - the ridiculous competitions and prizes for first sale of the day., most sales of the day, the pressure always on because if you don't sell you wont be coming back the next day. A bus load of fairly anarchic teenagers are taken to different areas of the US top sell magazine subscriptions door to door. The icy Crystal leads them, choose the areas, is driven by one of the sales team in an open top car. What do they want? Money.

There's a great soundtrack, which both entertains and underpins the frenetic rolling pace. For the heroine, Star it's an escape - the first scene she is crawling in a skip with her eight year old sister, trawling for food, while the four year old, too small to climb in, waits outside. Anything has to be better than this, or you would think. American Honey takes its time with few long set pieces - the Texans in white hats are a set piece, the oil worker is a set piece, but for the rest it follows this uncomfortable, crazy world of selling as it happens from place to place, using short realistic scenes to punch its message at you. It's a bleak message, but full of kaleidoscopic moving, dancing and cameos of the riders in the mini-bus. The colours are harsh, bright and blaring, just like the life they are leading. The cast were picked up from streets and beaches to join the film, so there is a fine natural feel to the group of misfits that Crystal has assembled.

Great dialogue keeps it moving, and ultimately it teaches you that selling is about selling yourself, nothing else, the product, the magazine is secondary. It's a lesson that Star learns and it isn't a happy one.