A coming-of-age tale with charm
To the Stars
AS if to celebrate the recent fifth anniversary of the marriage equality referendum, LGBT comingof-age drama To The Stars lands on streaming platforms tomorrow. Although not overwhelmingly original, Martha Stephens’ film from the debut screenplay by Shannon BradleyColleary is a very charming and enjoyable watch.
In the 1960s, the wide-open countryside of Oklahoma contrasts with the small community where everyone knows everything about everyone else. Iris (Kara Hayward) is a shy high-school student who is an outcast because she wets herself. Her father (Shea Whigham) is silently frustrated, her mother (Jordana Spiro) more vocally so and Iris hovers as innocuously as possible between them.
When a glamorous new student, Maggie (Liana Liberato), arrives in town, she and Iris strike up an unlikely friendship. Maggie is everything that Iris is not and knows how to manipulate her way in with the cool kids, taking Iris with her.
The lesbian romance is neither a major part of the film nor what you might expect, and none of it is explicit at all. Actually, if it wasn’t flagged, you would barely notice it because the film focuses on broader soul-crushing.
The main characters are all female but the sense of oppressiveness, of thwarted hopes, dreams and happiness, is more general. Whether it be through laws, expectation or social pressure, everyone has a place they’re supposed to fit into.
This world is also exclusively white. But that can lead to a frustration that can manifest in many different ways, from trying to keep other people crushed into the same pen, to violence.
Not just the open midwestern spaces contrast with the social claustrophobia; traditionally, films set in times of bobby socks and Doo-wop music are meant to represent simpler, happy times but this reminds you that
they were miserable for anyone who didn’t like the place assigned to them.
Some of it is a little unsubtly done, the odd cake is overegged, but overall, the film has a light touch and the characters are easy to care about.
Romance films en famille can be awkward but this is suitable for young teens and up and although it treads a familiar enough path, I enjoyed it a lot.