‘The Sweet East’: Cannes Review

Dir: Sean Price Williams. US. 2023. 104mins

Sean Price Williams’ feature directorial debut is both repulsed and fascinated by America, a nation obsessed with celebrity and violence that is shown to be populated by peculiar, hopeless souls seeking some sense of contentment. The Sweet East proves to be an unapologetically scruffy road movie in which a directionless teenager finds herself on a strange odyssey, each new encounter more surreal than the last. Talia Ryder gives a magnetic performance, providing an anchor for a film that is amusing and electric but mostly uneven.

An unapologetically scruffy road movie

A celebrated cinematographer for independent New York filmmakers such as the Safdie brothers, Michael Almereyda and Alex Ross Perry (who serves as a producer), Williams premieres his fable-like drama in Directors’ Fortnight, where audiences should appreciate its adventurous spirit and scuzzy poetry. Commercial prospects look minimal, but The Sweet East could attract hipper arthouse crowds.   

High-schooler Lillian (Ryder) travels to Washington, D.C. with her class, only to bump into a local anarchist named Caleb (Earl Cave), who rescues her from an active-shooter situation. Yet viewers should not get too attached to Caleb — or any of the individuals Lillian meets — as she soon ditches him for a pretentious professor, Lawrence (Simon Rex), who she casually tries to seduce. From there, an unexpected acting career and a shocking shootout await her.

Much like the films Williams has lensed for others, The Sweet East incorporates dreamy, grainy 16mm to give Lillian’s journey extra mystery and wonder. But the entrancingly smudgy images underline what is decidedly unromantic about this road trip, as our heroine often confronts the dark underside of American culture. Bigots and scary extremists are prevalent, while the queasy courtship between Lillian and Lawrence — who does not want to cross any ethical lines, despite her increasing sexual teasing — seems to speak to the ugly tendency of older men to prey on younger women. 

Not that Lillian is some innocent Alice in this bizarre wonderland. Ryder plays her with a sharp intellect, her piercing eyes always sizing up every situation and calculating how to turn it to her advantage. The Sweet East introduces Lillian without much backstory, but we become acquainted with her savvy and adaptability as the film rolls along. There is a hint that, like so many young people, Lillian is filled with an ineffable malaise — and that this unpredictable adventure will finally unlock something within her. Altering elements of her past when she meets someone new — sometimes even going by a different name — Lillian undergoes a reinvention, and Ryder’s enigmatic turn leaves us wondering what she is running from and where she thinks she is headed.

Perhaps not surprisingly because of his familiarity with the milieu, Williams mocks the east coast indie film scene, spoofing self-absorbed wannabe auteurs and their hopelessly amateurish pictures. (Anyone who finds it inexplicable that Lillian would suddenly, without any training, become the star of a low-budget project does not understand that’s precisely the joke, and the point, that he is making.) But The Sweet East’s inherently episodic structure starts to work against itself, with Nick Pinkerton’s screenplay more interested in excavating America’s tawdry weirdness than in exploring Lillian’s personal journey. 

Some of the supporting performances leave a mark. Rex, terrific in 2021’s Red Rocket, is superb as a smug pseudo-intellectual who eventually realises that this teenager is far smarter than he is. And while The Sweet East’s skewering of film culture is overdone and unsubtle, Ayo Edebiri nails a certain type of delusional director with effortless charm. Too bad the character’s dream project will result in horrible bloodshed once elements of Lillian’s past arrive to get vengeance. 

But that’s just one chapter in this fractured fairy tale which ultimately overstays its welcome. The Sweet East ends on a spiteful, provocative note meant to drive home the notion of America as a beautiful wasteland of enrapturing contradictions — a place of such anger and hatred, but also such messy vitality and resolute dreamers. It is a rich idea that, like Lillian, gets lost along the way.