A spectacular film that manages to feel so unbearably real and shows that gritty can be just as beautiful, if not even more. Andrea Arnold demonstrates there is poetry in even the most ordinary.

Update (7/19/18) - I can’t stop thinking about this film after watching it, how it feels entirely like a dream but attached to flesh and memories, so much that I’ve grown nostalgic for the story and it’s characters, as if their memories were my own.

Update (2/18/21) - I haven't stopped thinking about this film ever since. It's easily become my most studied film of all time and today, while reading about Rush Limbaugh (to be quite honest, I've only heard his name in passing up until now) I thought about perhaps the most pivotal scene in Andrea Arnold's masterpiece to this date.

"So you're a real American Honey like me huh?"

One girl wears Confederate bikinis, downs tonic like water, and exploits poor teens in a cramped van for magazine sales. She represents wage slavery, post-colonialism, the elusive "American Dream." The other is everything but that.

"So you're a real American Honey like me huh?"

In a way, Andrea Arnold poses the question: who's America is this anyways? Who's the real American Honey? Is there only space for one?