A teenaged Cherie Currie (played by an astoundingly mature-looking Dakota Fanning) struts across the stage in a corset and fishnets, straddling the microphone as she barks out in her trademark cacophonous growl, “Hello world, I’m your wild girl/I’m your ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!”
An iconic scene in rock history, Currie’s performance—taken from the peak of her fame as the lead singer of all-girl rock band the Runaways—stands in many ways as the aesthetic and emotional focal point of director Floria Sigismondi’s film The Runaways. Replete with seventies-era glitz and sharply tinged with the sex, drugs and emotional upheaval that notoriously tore the band apart, the film is a surpringly artistic look into the group’s rise and fall.
Kristen Stewart plays guitarist and music icon Joan Jett, breaking from her static role in Twilight to successfully portray a rough yet sensitive Jett. Fanning similarly shines as Currie, infusing her transformation from shy teen to drugged-out publicity maven with an affective pull. Indeed, the story of the band itself is well known and thus predictable, so the heart of the film is away from the narrative. It resides instead in the relationships formed between band members and their manipulative manager Kim Fowley (a sufficiently creepy Michael Shannon) and in the painstaking recreation of a fleeting moment in musical history.
The result is a kinesthetic, immersive experience that vibrates with a palpable energy, washing over and through the music, sets and performances—leaving viewers with a visceral glimpse into a brief, bygone rock era.
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