‘The Runaways’ New York Times Review

It helps that Floria Sigismondi, a director of music videos who is making her feature debut, has a good ear and a sharp eye for period detail. Shot (by Benoît Debie) with a grainy, smeary look that evokes the decade as effectively as the clothes and haircuts, “The Runaways” balances nostalgia for wild bygone times with a cautionary sense of their less heroic side. Acknowledging the brazen, rebellious energy of rock ’n’ roll at the dawn of punk, Ms. Sigismondi also tallies the costs that an ardent, ambitious love of the music can exact.

The film is in effect a double biopic, chronicling the divergent fates of Ms. Jett (who is an executive producer) and Ms. Currie (whose memoir was the basis for the movie) as they learn how to play music and then how to handle fame. They start out as fans, but their aspirations to emulate their idols are blocked by long-standing sexism. “Girls can’t play the electric guitar,” a music teacher smugly informs Joan; Cherie, who worships David Bowie, is heckled and humiliated when she performs his song “Lady Grinning Soul” at a school talent show.Joan, a sullen, skinny glue-sniffer who suggests a young, androgynous Keith Richards, is the more disciplined of the two, but their big break comes courtesy of Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), a promoter who takes the girls under his not entirely benevolent wing. After Joan approaches him at a club with the idea of starting an all-girl rock band, Fowley recruits the timid, dreamy Cherie and a bunch of other young women and subjects them to a rigorous training regimen in a broken-down trailer. He teaches them to deal with hecklers, to howl and wail and strut just like their male idols, and preaches a passionate if self-contradictory brand of macho feminism. “This is not about women’s lib,” he crows, a rooster girding his chicks for battle. “It’s about women’s libido.”

Ms. Sigismondi, as she parses this distinction, is astute in recognizing that the rise of the Runaways was fueled by a volatile blend of empowerment and exploitation. The girls, well shy of their 18th birthdays, play their own instruments and write some of their own material, but their unscrupulous Svengali keeps all the control and most of the money. (Welcome to the music business!) And the version of girl pop that sells the band to record buyers and concertgoers is not exactly Hannah Montana, or even Britney Spears. They are advertised as “genuine jailbait” and “braless,” and presented to the world as kittenish tigresses — not role models but fetish objects.

All of this — as well as the easy availability of drugs and the absence of any kind of parental supervision — proves too much for Cherie. Ms. Fanning, who has shown herself a remarkably disciplined and self-aware actress almost since toddlerhood, displays heartbreaking vulnerability as well as frightening poise. Cherie is the band’s pretty face and pinup girl, posing for a cheesecake magazine spread (at Fowley’s urging) without her band mates’ knowledge. She is also something of a homebody, with a close, complicated relationship with her twin sister, Marie (Riley Keough).

Joan, who clearly loves Cherie (the kiss between Ms. Stewart and Ms. Fanning has become grist for talk-show chat), is also her rival and foil. Joan is the backbone of the band, and the one most able to turn Fowley’s advice into a program of professional success. And Ms. Stewart, watchful and unassuming, gives the movie its spine and soul. Cherie may dazzle and appall you, but Joan is the one you root for, and the one rock ’n’ roll fans of every gender and generation will identify with.

It is not always clear which story “The Runaways” wants to tell, and it hits a few too many standard music biography beats. Here, right when you expect them, are the early setbacks and heady triumphs, the pressures of the road and the pitfalls of celebrity. But Ms. Sigismondi infuses crucial scenes with a rough, energetic spirit, and shows a willingness to accept the contradictions inherent in the material without prurience, moralism or too much sentimentality. The movie may be a little too tame in the end, but at its best it is just wild enough.

Source: NY Times

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