The Starling Girl Director On The Power Of Location & Perspective [SXSW]

While at sxsw, we spoke with TheStarlingGirl director Laurel Parmet about the biggest challenges she overcame in her feature film debut, how she shaped the story through Jem's (Eliza Scanlen) perspective, and the beauty that Kentucky brought to the film:

Writer-director Laurel Parmet makes her feature film debut with The Starling Girl, which has already received positive reviews on the festival circuit and even had its South By Southwest premiere earlier this month. The film follows teenager Jem Starling , who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian community in Kentucky. Her upbringing can be stifling, given the repressed emotions and strict moral codes, but she finds freedom in her love of dance.

I lucked out. I had a great cast, and I had a great team behind me, so I really didn't have to make too many compromises in terms of my vision. I got most of what I wanted, which was lovely. I think we had the standard limitations that you're dealing with when you don't have tons of time. Big picture, probably the largest thing to overcome was COVID. Of course, every film had to deal with those issues.

The film is set in a community that is oppressed at the times, but I didn't want to push that visually so much, because we get it. It's a difficult place to grow up in for Jem at times, and I didn't need to hit the audience over the head with that visually. I wanted to offer another side of her world that is beautiful, because there's a lot that's really lovely about tight-knit communities and about faith and about growing up in a place outside of a mainstream city.

Every decision that we made, and that the actors made too, was really at the service of helping to make sure that the film was set in her headspace. Those were conversations that I had with all the actors really early on and that everyone was very supportive of. But also, Wrenn and Jimmi are incredible actors, and we developed the characters and gave them specific intentions when we rehearsed. And I think what was lovely is that all of the cast were able to see themselves in these characters.

Then it's prepping like hell, working with my cinematographer, shot-listing, and thinking about what we want to say with the camera. And then it's me going and rehearsing with actors and seeing what they do. I never want to confine their movements to where I want to place the camera; that's just not really how I work. It's letting them explore, and if we're lucky to get into the space beforehand, that's great.

But I would love to direct something that I didn't write if it's a great script, or to adapt a story would be amazing too. I'd also love to collaborate with other writers. I haven't found my writing partner yet, but that would be a dream to have a go-to person to write things with. That would be amazing.

Eliza and I had a lot of conversations about ways into the character, and why she is attracted to Owen. I'm sure my experiences subconsciously influenced our discussions and how we broke down the character, but I didn't want to bring in my direct experiences to inform how she played Jem. I wanted her to make the character her own and to really give her permission to do what she needed to create the character.

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