The Runaways (2010)
The Runaways(USA) Directed by Floria Sigismondi Wriiten by Floria Sigismondi Starring Dakota Fanning; Kristen Stewart; Michael Shannon; Stella Maeve; Alia Shawkat; Tatum O’Neal; Brett Cullen; Scout Taylor Compton; Keir O’Donnell; Brendan Sexton
In her first feature, Italian writer/director Floria Sigismondi, a photographer and video artist, chose to adapt lead singer Cherie Currie’s autobiography, Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, to tell the story of the all teenage girl band The Runaways. Despite the inclusion of some of the requisite drugs and sex, as well as the presence of an outrageous, meglomaniacal puppetmaster (Michael Shannon as Kim Fowler), something here feels vaguely sanitized. It’s as if the film is messy, but not messy enough.
Troubling too is the overly narrow focus, which would have us believe that lead singer Currie (Dakota Fanning) and guitarist/singer Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart), one of the film’s executive producers, were the only group members sufficiently worthy of exploration. Forget the fact that Lita Ford (Scout Taylor Compton) went on to become a famous solo performer, or that drummer Sandy West (Stella Maeve) wound up leading a life denoted by serious drug abuse, lesbianism, and prison, the two female stars dominate the allotted screen time, thus reducing the potentially fascinatingly and complicated dynamics to a more simplistic and straightforward tale of two individual (albeit intersecting) characters and story-lines.
In fact, due to a legal issue, a composite character, Robin (a woefully underutilized Allie Shawkat), was created to represent real life original bass player Jackie Fox. Interesting actors in supporting roles such as Tatum O’Neal (as Cherie’s Mom); Keir O’Donell; and Brendan Sexton are there and gone before we get a chance to figure out who their characters are. The relationship between Cherie and her sister Marie (Riley Keogh), the twin who got left behind, is potentially compelling, but also winds up under-developed.
Sigisimondi employs her photographic talents to create an authentic period feel, replete with visuals that are muddied just enough that we can practically smell the band’s cigarette smoke breath and the performance sweat emanating off their capes and leather pants. Cinematographer, Belgian Benoit Debie (Irreversible; Day Night Day Night; Innocence) is controversial French director Gasper Noe’s frequent collaborator, and the attention paid to the look is evident. One wishes that the script from both a dialogue and structural standpoint came anywhere near being as innovative or interesting.
The acting is generally solid with Stewart particularly strong as Jett. Given more to do, the performance would likely have shown to be fuller and deeper as Stewart is clearly an actor focused on the internal. Many of the subtleties of her representation are unfortunately lost, however, in a series of banal scenes that fail to dig down deep to the abhorrent underbelly of exploiting young teenage women in the pursuit of a dollar. While the film, to its credit, avoids the preachiness that might have pushed this toward movie of the week territory, one can’t ignore a kind of soft serve handling that seems to shy away from testing the limits of a topic open to true cinematic commentary.
Whether fears about ratings and marketing, and/or Jett’s inclusion as executive producer (her view of Fowler’s exploitation differs greatly from other band members) contributed to a more homogenized perspective or not is open to debate, but all former members agree that drug and alcohol abuse, sex, and manipulation of various kinds were a part of the ride, and one is naturally faced with a host of questions regarding the band members ability at the time to make their own decisions, as well as the complicity of all adults (including parents; Fowler; record company execs; handlers; roadies) who were present during the experience.
Sigismondi clearly understands the sexual politics here, and it is not as if she ignores Fowler’s mistreatment of the band members, or the questions of period female empowerment in the music industry/society as whole, and while the band’s short-lived run (only 3 1/2 years) contributes to a successful fight against the kind of episodic torpor often besetting biopics, there is a certain sense of immediacy missing from the package that should be very much a part of this kind of verite attempt.
Ultimately, former bassist Vicky Tischler Blue’s (known as Vicki Blue) 2005 documentary Edgeplay: A story About the Runawaysprobably stands as a better representation of the phenomenon of a band that, in its original form, made only three (The Runaways (1976); Queens of Noise (1977); Live in Japan (1977) albums (and several with other members), and had only one real hit (Cherry Bomb), but are still remembered for the major cultural impression they stamped upon various parts of the world.