Director Sean Price Williams’ film debuts in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. It’s hard to tell what the end point of The Sweet East is, but Lillian returns home at some point and is still a fucking badass.
Cinematographer Sean Price Williams gives this picaresque road trip drama its vintage style, adding grain and grit to the film. But it’s Talia Ryder who carries the movie.
The Cast
Talia Ryder’s performance as the directionless Lillian in The Sweet East is a revelation. Longtime New York cinematographer Sean Price Williams (Good Time, Her Smell) makes a welcome directorial debut here with a unapologetic scruffy road movie that is both repulsed and fascinated by America. It sees the nation as a series of concentric cults, with Lillian acting as a teenage Virgil leading us through this stupid new hell.
Williams eschews soapbox rhetoric and allows his cast of characters to mold themselves from more ancient sources, whether a Shakespearean nymphette, a fluttering Edgar Allen Poe, or a pair of pierced Antifa punks who gleefully self-identify as “activists.” His characters are skewed and self-satisfied, but they don’t come off as cartoon caricatures. And when his heroine’s wanton use of the term “retard” is finally called out, it is a moment that packs an actual punch.
The Sweet East is a deft satire that takes on the united archetypes of America’s northerly half, as seen through the eyes of an apathetic, aloof high schooler. As she drifts through a kaleidoscopic tour of the Northeast, Lilian encounters PizzaGate conspiracy theorists, Neo-Nazi academics, anarchist protesters, self-satisfied filmmakers, and religious zealots. And through it all, the film’s main character, played by Ryder, nonchalantly strolls forward and past, with a smirk on her face.
The Story
The Sweet East finds cinematographer Sean Price Williams assuming the director’s chair for the first time, working from a screenplay by Nick Pinkerton. It stars Talia Ryder as a high school student who gets lost on a national field trip to Washington, D.C, where she encounters a diverse group of people with wildly varying ideologies and beliefs. The picaresque journey sees her crossing paths with a rogues gallery of conspiracy theorists, white supremacist college professors, and independent filmmakers.
The film is a post-ironic picaresque that shows spiritually befuddled American culture with a mischievous spirit and a cynical wit. But it never settles into any clear mode of expression, and the broad strokes slapped on its characters feel more lurid than provocative.
Fortunately, Ryder’s performance makes it impossible to take the movie too seriously. Her deadpan delivery is a perfect match for the movie’s anarchic energy, and she captures a teen girl’s sense of being lost in this world with uncanny grace. It’s a rare treat to find a lead actress this appealing. Simon Rex and Ayo Edibiri also stand out among the ensemble, with the former giving his all as a smug pseudo-intellectual who realizes that Lillian is far smarter than he is. The latter is equally memorable as a delusional filmmaker who wants to shoot a documentary about her.
The Characters
The cast of characters in The Sweet East feels like a group of people you might pass by on the way to Metrograph on the Lower East Side. They’re all a little too much of themselves to be credible or endearing, even the most noxious poseurs (though Pinkerton doesn’t seem interested in giving them any interiority). They’re all jerks in their own way, and you won’t be able to root for Lilian as she wanders aimlessly through her hellscape.
The debut directorial effort of celebrated cinematographer Sean Price Williams (Good Time, Owen Kline’s Funny Pages, Brockhampton videos), the film features a breakout performance by Talia Ryder as the apathetic high school grad Lillian. The movie on gomovies app has a fable-like sensibility that should appeal to indie arthouse audiences, but commercial prospects look minimal.
The script by film critic Nick Pinkerton is a bit overcooked at times, but it has a killer hook in its premise: Lillian eludes her classmates on a school trip to Washington DC and winds up in the Northeast, where she wanders through a series of self-centered communities that are alternately cults and trolls. Ayo Edebiri, Jacob Elordi, Jeremy O Harris, Early Cave, Rish Shah and Simon Rex round out the supporting cast. They all deliver fine performances, but they’re essentially reacting to a script that doesn’t give them any room to be anything other than a smug blowhard.
Review
The Sweet East is a tawdry, provocative romp through America’s twisted fringes. It premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes and features a likable protagonist and a cultish cast of characters including Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi as a self-absorbed indie filmmaker, and Simon Rex as a closeted white supremacist. But director Sean Price Williams isn’t clear on what he wants his satirical national tour of brainless dogma to mean, and the movie quickly runs out of steam.
From the get-go, The Sweet East feels like a movie with nothing to lose. Lillian, played by Talia Ryder (Never Rarely Sometimes Always), is a disaffected high school girl who drifts across the nation with a ragtag group of outsiders ranging from antifa punks to a over-eager filmmaking duo to a closed-minded Neo-Nazi academic (Simon Rex). Her casual use of the word “retarded” during her pizzagate sequence sets the tone for a movie that takes aim at anything and everything it can think of in a cynical, deliberately provocative manner.
The movie isn’t without its merits, though it certainly takes the cynical approach to the extreme. Ryder is a remarkable actress and a receptacle for the film’s snarky takes on American ideologies, but her naivety makes it difficult to invest in her character beyond her desire to avoid her parental responsibilities.
