SEX. CHECK. DRUGS. CHECK. ROCK ‘N’ ROLL. CHECK.

The Runaways

***

Review by Joel Frost

The most striking thing about “The Runaways”, Floria Sigismondi’s film about the all-girl rock group of the same name, is that even as it navigates its way through a certain amount of standard rock-biopic fare, it is telling quite a unique story. A band in its early stages, a meteoric rise, the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll, the pissing on the guitars of the asshole headlining band while they’re on-stage. It’s all there, of course. What makes the film different, and what made The Runaways, themselves, unique is not exactly what they were doing, but that they were doing it at all. The Runaways were the first commercially successful all-girl hard rock band… one of the first all-girl rock bands at all… and try as hard as they could to fuck it all up with their wild and intoxicated judgement, they were actually pioneers. Rock and roll is still a bit of a boy’s club, but in 1975 it was almost exclusively so. Girls didn’t play electric guitars, as Joan Jett’s guitar teacher explained to her, as he tried to teach her “On Top of Old Smokey.” With assistance from a producer and a lot of grrl power, The Runaways helped turn that all around.

At the beginning of “The Runaways”, we meet Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), just as she gets her period for the first time. While it seems a little late for that in relation to Cherie’s age (15), it’s a poignant moment for the film… she’s not a girl anymore. She’s growing up fast, in the ways that an alcoholic/often absent Father and a distant, soon-to-leave-altogether Mother help spur along. She and her twin sister Marie rely on each other for support, and Cherie dreams of stardom.

Meanwhile, Joan Jett (Kristin Stewart) is in the midst of her own, somewhat similar struggle. She’s got no twin sister to rely on (or to rely on her), but she’s also adrift in the world of the 1970’s teenage girl with no parents to speak of. Her spirit and drive lead her to Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), a record producer who she recognizes. He’s a no-bullshit extrovert who takes a shine to Joan and soon he’s got her and drummer Sandy West rehearsing together with a promise of rock stardom. He finds Cherie in a sweaty and dirty rock club in her Bowie make-up and pulls her on-board. Robin (Alia Shawkat) and Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) are there to round out the line-up. Fowley directs, cajoles and insists that the girls understand and take seriously what they’re involved in. The band begins to take shape, fashioned by their drive and talent, Fowley’s direction, and the inevitable struggle against a hostile reception.

It’s in this that we understand what made The Runaways a good rock band, beyond a gimmick. Their edge is sharpened on the hard stone of the establishment of popular music. There’s irony here, of course, and the girls seem to know it, all while Fowley refuses to allow them to fall victim to it. Rock and roll was born from rebellion and was meant to be the voice of youth. The musical sexuality of teenagers. Yet, these teenagers must run up against the same latent (and sometimes overt) sexism that rock and roll, at its soul, challenges. It’s your parents who don’t want girls to rock, and your parents have no place in rock and roll. The Runaways were helping to carve out and define the freedom of rock music, into an avenue that it somehow hadn’t yet truly explored. It makes perfect sense while being utterly shocking: up until this band came along, rock had little room for girls, unless those girls were screaming about the boys.

It’s no shame on the members of The Runaways that they were helped along by a male producer. They were kids, after all… something the film allows them to be. The vibrating freedom of the youth and sexuality of these girls is palpable, scene to scene. The film is not exploitive with this, but it does not shy away, and that is very important. To attempt to neuter or clean up their history would have been a crime and disservice. It’s perhaps easier to imagine, via the prism of our moralizing culture of today, that the sexuality of 15-17 year-old girls is at all ignorable in the context of a story like this. It’s not. The camera works mainly in close shots, giving us a hazy yet unflinching view of who these people are as they try to create and have some control over their world(s). Their sexual drive is a powerful force, and it drove their music, but it in the hostile, condescending world they were forging through, at their young ages, it wasn’t easy to find satisfaction. The film carefully addresses the ways that these girls looked to each other for assistance in that area, without purporting a frat-boys fantasy of a sapphic orgy. Joan is depicted as the caretaker of the band, and in that capacity she serves as a guide for their sexuality as well.

Dakota Fanning couldn’t have found a better role to cross over from child-star to ingenue. She manages disaffection without being boring. She gives us vulnerability without pity. Her scene in a supermarket, wearing an outfit fit for a rock-star onstage, drunk and wavering while buying two onions and a bottle of vodka, is the heart of the film. The metaphor is clear and palpable: young girl, trying to do things her way in the established world, and of course stumbling along a bit. The supermarket’s lights wash her out and expose her as much as the stage lights make her look like a Goddess. The shaft of the vodka bottle with the two round onions seems an intentionally clumsy symbol of masculine oppression.

Michael Shannon has been systematically carving a place for himself in Hollywood as an eccentric. He was a creepy revelation as the human catalyst in “Revolutionary Road”, and he serves a similar purpose, with a much different character, in this film.

It’s Kristin Stewart, though, who anchors the film with her portrayal of Joan Jett. her physical and vocal work is on display in affecting Joan’s posture, attitude and soul. Apparently Joan Jett was played a version of one of the Runaways’ songs that Kristin had re-recorded the vocals for and Joan did not recognize that it was Kristin’s voice, thinking it was her own. That’s the kind of inhabiting that Ms. Stewart takes on in this film. Her growl seems just right.

The growl of this film in general is close to just right. The script isn’t perfect, perhaps… some parts a touch awkward or stilted. But what “The Runaways” loses in precision, it makes up for in emotion… like a lot of good rock and roll. There are some very powerful moments in the film, culminating in Joan and Cherie’s encounter at the end of it. At that point, with the short history of The Runaways over, what passes between the two characters is riveting. The sense is that these two women have experienced something together that no film could ever really explain. “The Runaways” makes a thumping, feedback-heavy, howling effort to do so and it’s a whole lot of fun watching it try.

Directed by: Floria Sigismondi
Release Date: April 9, 2010
Run Time: 109 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: R
Distributor: River Road Entertainment

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