Sundance review: Eliza Scanlen proves ecstatic anew in 'The Starling Girl'

by Jason Adams

Usually when I write about getting “representation” on-screen I’m talking about the gay stuff – like when Call Me By Your Name knocked me flat with its warmly lyrical depiction of a neurotic gayling’s first same-sex longings. And there was gay stuff at Sundance this year that I felt deep in my bones – the darkly funny internalized homophobia of Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun squarely hit the mark.  But no movie felt more like a mirror at this year’s fest than did writer-director Laurel Parmet’s debut film The Starling Girl, which explores the world of rural Christian fundamentalism with the crystal cold precision of one who barely survived that very thing. I speak from my own experience...

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