Parents' Guide to The Sweet East

This collaboration between movie critic Nick Pinkerton and cinematographer-director Sean Price Williams isn't good, but it's also not bad. Rather, it's a recklessly different film that has the makings of a future cult classic. The filmmakers tell this Alice in Wonderland-like tale story of a teen girl who's a blank-faced heroine but also a charlatan. She's quietly self-absorbed, lies to get what she wants, steals just because, and doesn't care how it impacts the people who took her in. She reflects no thoughts, opinions, or concerns about the people she meets along the way, most of whom are kind to her but extreme in their views. Those who take her in are presented as preposterous exaggerations and yet are fully dimensional. It's food for thought about the complexity of humanity and the politics of hate. At the same time, it's frustrating that two men in their 40s who are arrogant about their cinematic intelligence are so haphazard in presenting a main character who's a sexually manipulative, morally empty teen girl.

And the teens who watch The Sweet East don't seem likely to think deeply about The Sweet East or appreciate its many cinematic and literary nods to the likes of Alice, Dorothy, and even Coraline. It's the kind of film with shocking moments that might make high schoolers who watch together scream, "What????" and break into peals of laughter. Williams lights it all on fire and resolves nothing. Lillian has experiences, but she doesn't grow. In the opening scene, a high school lothario says, "It's just a movie" -- which is the writer and director signaling they take no responsibility for what they're putting into the world. Williams and Pinkerton point out how the fabric of society is being deconstructed by the fringe but don't seem to recognize that this film is just one more yank on the thread.