American Honey is a 2016 road drama film written and directed by Andrea Arnold, and starring Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf, and Riley Keough. The film follows Star (Lane), a young girl from a troubled home, who runs away with a traveling sales crew who drive across the American Midwest selling magazine subscriptions door to door. Principal photography began in May 2015 with filming taking place in several states across America. To date, it is Arnold's only film to be set and filmed outside of the United Kingdom.
The film was selected to compete for the at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize. American Honey received critical acclaim, with praise for Arnold’s direction, Lane's performance, and Ryan’s cinematography. The performances of LaBeouf and Keough also received critical praise. The film was released in the U.S. on 30 September 2016, by A24 and in the UK on 14 October 2016 by Focus Features and Universal Pictures. For the 70th BAFTA Awards, American Honey received a nomination for Best British Film.
Plot Star is a teenager living in Muskogee, Oklahoma. She lives a painful life, caring for two children that are not hers and living with their sexually abusive father, Nathan. While trying to hitchhike home one day, she spies a van full of young people and makes eye contact with Jake, one of the boys in the group. Star follows them to a local Kmart and sees Jake dancing to "We Found Love" on top of the registers before being escorted out by security. Star returns Jake's phone, as it had fallen out of his pocket, and he offers her a job as part of their magazine sales crew, telling her to come with him to Kansas City. Star declines but Jake nevertheless tells her to meet them in the parking lot of the local Motel 6 the next morning.
Packing her belongings while Nathan is in another room, Star secretly escapes and takes the children to a local dance hall where their mother Misty dances. Star confronts Misty and tells her she needs to care for her own kids, and though Misty actively refuses, Star runs away from them and into the night. She goes to the motel and sleeps on the ground beneath the crew's van until morning.
In the morning as the other teens approach, Star is interviewed by the crew's leader, Krystal, who hires her on after she establishes that Star is a legal adult, that no one will miss her, and that she promises to work hard. In the van on the way to Kansas, Star meets the other members of the crew. After arriving in Kansas, Star is paired with Jake, the veteran of the group, to be trained. The pair are dropped off in an affluent neighborhood, where Star upsets potential customers because she disapproves of Jake's behavior. Jake lies, shows her that he has a gun, and steals a ring from one of the houses. Despite his radical behavior, Star is attracted to Jake, flirting with and eventually kissing him on the front lawn of one of the houses. That night, Krystal calls Star into her motel room and tells her that Jake has posted his lowest sales ever. Star promises to improve. As she watches on, Krystal, in a bikini patterned with the Confederate flag, forces Jake to apply lotion to her body.
The following day, upset by the events of the night prior, Star vows to outsell Jake. She flags down three strangers in a convertible wearing cowboy hats, who offer to help her, thinking she is being harassed by Jake. The trio bring her to their home and offer to buy several subscriptions if she swallows the worm at the bottom of a bottle of mezcal. Star does, and makes the sale. Jake, however, fearing the worst, arrives and threatens the men with a gun before stealing their car. Initially angry at Jake, Star is later touched that he came to find her, and the two have sex in the car before abandoning it in a parking lot. When they return to the motel for the evening, Jake tells her not to mention their relationship to anyone, and he gives the money Star earned to Krystal under the guise that he earned the money himself.
For a while, things between Jake and Star are tense, and Krystal threatens to drop her on the side of the road if she keeps causing trouble. The crew leaves the motel and ends up living temporarily in a rundown house, where Jake and Star renew their relationship behind Krystal’s back. Star asks him what his dreams are, and he shows her his private stash of cash and items he's stolen from the houses he visits, which he intends to use to buy a home.
The next day, Krystal dumps the girls off in the nearby oil fields. Star climbs in the back of the oil workers’ truck and tries to sell to them, but one of the oil workers tells her that he will pay her five hundred dollars to go out with him for the night. Star asks for a thousand dollars and agrees to meet with him when he gets off work. The man picks her up that evening and he subsequently masturbates as she sits next to him in the truck. After the man drops her off, she hears Jake stop the truck and attack the man. Shortly after, a bloodied Jake interrogates her, asking if she slept with the man. When Star refuses to give him a clear answer, Jake tears through the house and leaves on a motorcycle.
The following morning, the crew get in the van and find a new recruit there, while Jake is still missing. Krystal calls Star to her room at the motel and informs her she has let Jake go, that she paid him money for each girl he recruited, and that he slept with all of them. She finishes by telling Star that she isn’t special and that she means nothing to Jake.
The next day, Krystal takes the crew to a poor area in Rapid City, South Dakota. Star enters a house and meets several affable children whose mother is on drugs and unable to properly care for them. As Star's own mother died of a meth overdose, she feels empathetic toward them and leaves to buy them groceries when she notices that their fridge is empty. She returns and leaves the groceries on the porch. At the pickup that day, Jake is back in the van, and Star is further conflicted about her feelings towards him.
That evening, the crew light a bonfire. Dancing around the fire, Star is pulled aside by Jake, who hands her a baby turtle that he found in the nearby lake. Star takes it to the edge of the water and releases it before following the turtle into the water herself. She immerses herself fully beneath the surface of the water for an extended period of time, before abruptly rising for air once again. Above her head, as the water runs off of her body, a series of lightning bugs can be seen dispersing into the night sky.
Cast
Production Development Arnold began writing the screenplay in 2013 and it was first announced under the pre-production title Mag Crew at Film4's 2013 Cannes Film Festival party. Arnold has said the movie was inspired by an investigative piece she read in The New York Times about mag crews. The film was optioned from The Times and Ian Urbina in 2008. Arnold became inspired by lives of American youths in "magazine crews" who travel the United States selling magazine subscriptions, an occupation that has caused controversy in the United States. In researching for the film, Arnold embarked on a road trip from California to Miami, Florida. In late 2013, Arnold was the Filmmaker-in-Residence at the New York Film Festival. During this time, she worked on the second draft of the script and used the opportunity to meet with potential casting directors.
In 2014, the film's producers and new title, American Honey, were announced.
Casting In March 2015, casting took place in Oklahoma in preparation for a summer shoot. Arnold "street cast" by searching beaches, streets, and approaching drunk teenagers. Casting directors Lucy Pardee and Jennifer Venditti also scoured public areas such as Walmart, bars, and dollar stores to scout individuals that would fit the roles of the mag crew youths. Arnold said she would scout places with individuals that a mag crew recruiter would find intriguing.
Arnold discovered Sasha Lane while she was on spring break with her friends. Lane subsequently auditioned for the film and was cast in the lead role. In April 2015, Shia LaBeouf was cast in an unspecified role and Riley Keough was cast shortly thereafter. In early June, Arielle Holmes was reported to have joined the cast. The remainder of the cast were found in parking lots, construction sites, streets, and state fairs.
Filming
In May 2015, filming was reported in Muskogee, Okmulgee, and Norman, Oklahoma. In late May 2015, production was reported in Mission Hills, Kansas, and areas of Kansas City, Missouri, as well as Missouri Valley, Iowa. The pool scene was filmed at a private residence in Bennington, Nebraska. On 9 June, production took place in Omaha, Nebraska and Grand Island, Nebraska. On 24 June, LaBeouf was hospitalized after being injured on set during filming in Williston, North Dakota. Filming wrapped on 5 July 2015. The film was shot over 56 days, in several states.
As with Arnold's film Fish Tank, the process of filming was a combination of improvisation and scripted scenes. As shooting time was limited and the film was shot on the road, Arnold filmed unscripted interactions in the van to add to the realism of the film.
Soundtrack The film's soundtrack consists of 19 songs and features a mix of genres such as hip hop (specifically trap music), country, and pop rock. The songs were compiled by producer Julia Oh, music supervisors Earworm Music, Andrea Arnold, and the film's cast. The soundtrack was released digitally by UMe on September 30, 2016.
According to music critic Robert Christgau, the film's soundtrack album went "unheralded" but "makes a single living thing of Rae Sremmurd and the Raveonettes, E-40 and Steve Earle as the must-see Andrea Arnold flick it's attached to follows a troupe of young magazine-subscription hustlers across flyover country more humane than its taste in presidents might lead cineastes to believe." In a decade-end list, Christgau named it the third-best album of the 2010s. The film derives its title from "American Honey", a 2010 hit single by American country music group Lady A, that is sung along to by the sales crew in a pivotal scene.
Track listing "Beginning Of Anything" — Quigley "Uber Everywhere" — MadeinTYO "Take Your Time" — Sam Hunt "Out The Mud" — Kevin Gates "Copperhead Road" — Steve Earle "Choices (Yup)" — E-40 "All The Time" — Jeremih feat. Lil Wayne & Natasha Mosley "Ride" — Ciara ft. Ludacris "Recharge and Revolt" — The Raveonettes "No Type" — Rae Sremmurd "Bricks" — Carnage ft. Migos "Fade Into You" — Mazzy Star "8896" — Låpsley "U Guessed It" — OG Maco "I Like Tuh" — Carnage "Careless Love" — Bonnie "Prince" Billy "American Honey" — Lady A "God's Whisper" — Raury "I Hate Hate (But I Love Love)" — Razzy Bailey
Other songs featured in the film but not included in the soundtrack are: "Bounce It" — Juicy J ft. Wale and Trey Songz "We Found Love" — Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris "I Don't Dance" — Lee Brice "I Don't Fuck with You" — Big Sean ft. E-40 "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" — Waylon Jennings "Dream Baby Dream" — Bruce Springsteen "I Kill Children" — Dead Kennedys
Release In January 2016, A24 acquired distribution rights to the film. In May 2016, Focus Features, where the film was initially in development under its original title, re-acquired most international distribution rights to the film, releasing it through its parent company Universal Pictures. The film had its world premiere at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2016, where it was selected to compete for the . The film also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2016, Fantastic Fest, and the BFI London Film Festival on 7 October 2016.
American Honey was theatrically released in the United States on 30 September 2016 and on 14 October in the United Kingdom.
Reception Critical response