THE SWEET EAST, US, 2023. Starring Talia Ryder, Earl Cave, Simon Rex, Ayo Edebiri, Jeremy O Harris, Jacob Elordi, Rish Shah. Directed by Sean Price Williams. 104 minutes. Rated MA (Strong violence, drug use, nudity and sexualised imagery),
The title. East refers to the US states from New York north to Vermont. Sweet? Not really – rather, ironically. This film has been advertised as a picaresque journey. Checking again on the meaning of picaresque, the adjective is accurate: suggesting, or being a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a usually roguish, but appealing, protagonist of a low social class.
And who’s picaresque journey? It is Lillian, a high school student from South Carolina, arriving in Washington DC with a group of school friends on tour – something of an exuberant lot, cameras at the ready.
And the audience for this film? Not a mainstream audience because Sweet East is sending up mainstream films. It is small budget. It is independent movie-making. The director, Sean Price Williams has been cinematographer for some admired independent films such as Uncut Gems. And the writer, huge emphasis on words, vocabulary, articulation, popular rhetoric, is a long time film critic, Nick Pinkerton. Which means that Sweet East is a film for themselves and their friends and admirers. And for those who want something a little different.
We are introduced to Lillian, singing, looking at herself in the mirror, joining up with her friends at the beginning of the picaresque. What is on this picaresque menu? And how seriously should we take it all? Lots of the bizarre, sometimes absurd, funny, depending on your sense of humour.
First there is a send-up of deranged customer with a gun in the pizza parlour, hiding in the toilet. Then her rescue by some rather preppie protesters, banners and causes, going to the wrong venue for their protest. Lillian gets away, finds herself in a more serious protest, right-wingers, and being rescued by professorial neo-Nazi. She calls herself Annabel which is a cue for his enthusiasm about Edgar Allan Poe. She can be sexually provocative. He is ideological, conversation as a lecture. But, she exploits him, accommodation, food, clothes, trip to New York – and stealing his bag full of money.
At this stage, we are wondering where Lillian/Annabel is going when she is sighted, scouted by two African-American filmmakers, so with the gift of the more-than-gab, chatter about moviemaking, references to Merchant Ivory films, infatuated with this young girl, photographing her, rehearsing her, making her the star of the period film, co-starring with the British self-infatuated actor, Jacob Elordi. But, there is a nice cameraman who is protective of her.
Then a huge change of mood, perhaps indulgence by the filmmakers, gangsters looking for Annabel for the money, and an enormous mishmash of violence which could be the envy of horror filmmakers with a love of gore! Deaths all round. But, a rescue by the nice cameraman, and his remote community with Muslim prayer practices.
Where can it all end? Well, of course, Annabel becoming Lillian again, going home to family, the actual ordinary life, experiencing the mayhem. Is this the kind of scenario which influenced Alex Garland to make Civil War?
Madman
Released 2 May