The Starling Girl and the Female Experience

By Liv Hodgson

There’s a scene in Laurel Parmet’s The Starling Girl (2023) where the main character, Jem (Eliza Scanlen), breaks down in tears after being told that the outfit she’s wearing isn’t mindful enough. Her bra is visible underneath it, and in the fundamentalist Christian community that Jem grew up in, this is deeply wrong. She covers herself with her mother’s sweater, runs outside of the Church, and cries. The shame she feels is palpable. 

When I first saw The Starling Girl in 2023, I was sitting in an empty theater. I don’t remember choosing to go see it. I worked at the theater and got free tickets anyway, and I must’ve read the plot summary and thought it sounded interesting. It was mid-day, I think. And I was alone. When the credits began to roll, I was stuck in my seat, trying to process the magnitude of what I had just watched. Never before had a movie made me feel so seen. 

The fact that this movie resonates with me the way it does is surprising on the surface. A young girl grows up in this fundamentalist community in Kentucky, where her whole life, and the whole lives of everyone around her, revolves around Church and God. Jem’s existence, especially as a woman, is deeply controlled, and every sinful thought is deeply shamed. Then, an affair with her youth pastor (Lewis Pullman), and the mental decline of her father (Jimmi Simpson), changes everything. 

I grew up in suburban New York, just North of the city. I went to public school, and my family stopped going to Church when I was young. Other than Christmas, we were atheist. I was given the freedom of choice in everything my heart desired. Yet still, the scene of Jem crying from the shame of not being mindful sat with me so profoundly, that I thought about it for weeks afterward. 

The fantastic thing about this film is that despite the literal story being extremely niche, the experience of Jem as a woman is widely relatable. I, too, have felt deep shame about my womanhood; about sexual urges, and saying the wrong thing, and making a fool of myself, and being on my period in the wrong place at the wrong time. I couldn’t say the word “sex” until late into high school. I would suppress every part of myself to please the people around me. My biggest fear was someone thinking I wasn’t being mindful, and everything I did felt wrong. 

Jem is constantly being told she is wrong, and that it is her fault. Teenage girls everywhere are receiving the same message from society, whether God’s involved or not. The Starling Girl’s quiet feminism is as important as ever in our current political climate, in a country where the kind of control that Jem experiences is growing in popularity. 

The Starling Girl is Laurel Parmet’s debut film. It premiered at Sundance in 2023 and had a brief theatrical release following that. It made little to no noise in the film world, despite its success at Sundance and its positive critical reviews. I find this to be a travesty, and have spent every day since viewing it trying to share it with the people in my life, especially the women. 

I had the privilege of screening the film this past Wednesday, September 24th, as a part of the FMS Screening Series here at Purchase. Though the audience was small, I was able to witness the film have an impact on people just the way it did on me. 

Parmet has such an empathetic understanding of her main character that you can feel with every camera stroke. The hot, suffocating nature of rural Kentucky is so tangible through the screen that you almost feel sticky with sweat just watching it. Parmet clearly has a special touch for character-driven cinema, and I am eager to see what she makes next. In the meantime, I have The Starling Girl’s poster hanging beside my bed, and I will continue to spread the gospel of this film (no pun intended) until everyone I’ve met has seen it. It is currently available to watch for free on Fandango at Home!