Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Sweet East’ on Hulu, a Goofy Poli-sci Satire Anchored by a Bemused Talia Ryder

I didn’t know what I was getting into with The Sweet East (now streaming on Hulu), and it turns out that was the perfect way to watch a loopy satire that identifies itself as “picaresque” and is about a young woman who’s passively swept into one bizarre adventure after another. The film has been touted as a coming-out for star Talia Ryder (of Never Rarely Sometimes Always sort-of fame), and I won’t argue that point. But I’d also add that it’s a coming-out of sorts for first-time director Sean Price Williams, whose pedigree as a cinematographer includes a pair of remarkably shot neo-indie classics, the Safdie Bros.’ Good Time and Alex Ross Perry’s underrated masterpiece Her Smell. The result of this coming-together of fresh talent – including first-time screenwriter Nick Pinkerton – is a wild, wildly understated comedy that has a lot of fun jabbing pins into America’s most absurd socio-political balloons.

THE SWEET EAST: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Lillian (Ryder) lies in a hotel bed next to a superchode who almost half-jokes (but maybe isn’t joking at all) that the contents of his used condom could someday be quite valuable. If this isn’t a situation that requires Lillian to extricate herself immediately, I don’t know what is. But she holds on, as the school group she’s with goes on a guided tour of Washington, D.C. Her fellow teens fart around and act the fool and she chooses not to participate; she seems to be an outsider in their reindeer games, and I might be projecting her disdain for her peers upon her, because she’s less annoyed than impassive. The group is at a pizza joint for karaoke and pie when an opportunity presents itself: A doofus runs in with a gun, fires it at the ceiling and demands to see the pedophile ring he believes is in the basement. Lillian seems nonplussed about being caught in the middle of the absurd politico-cultural touchstone that is Pizzagate, and we feel like this is so because it’s exactly how anyone else wouldn’t react.

In the midst of the brouhaha, a spiky-haired punker, Caleb (Earl Cave), grabs her and they escape through a secret tunnel that sure seems to imply that there was, indeed, a pedophile ring in the basement. Caleb belongs to a collective of social-justice art-loons who scrounge food out of the trash and live in a hovel, and Lillian crashes with them for a while, and somehow doesn’t bolt when Caleb whips out his dick to show her how it’s encrusted with countless piercings. She tags along as the group ventures to a meadow to protest a right-wing White-guy gathering that they can’t find – “There isn’t any Nazis here!” they moan. She wanders off to pee and a couple edits later, she alone meanders into the cadre of armed palefaces and meets a greasy fart in a pair of khakis named Lawrence (Simon Rex of Red Rocket). She’ll never see Caleb or those other weirdos again, and this is pretty much how things tend to go for Lillian.

Lawrence takes Lillian back to his house in Jersey and they engage in a sort of Lolitaesque life for a while, where the decidedly older Lawrence looks at this decidedly younger girl with an expression that reads like the lyrics to Motorhead’s ‘Jailbait’ while Lillian worrilessly cavorts in golden-hour lighting in the girlish clothes that used to belong to his sister. Occasionally, Lillian runs her finger along the books on his shelf and pulls off Mein Kampf. Eventually, they venture to New York City, where she takes an opportunity to grab Lawrence’s duffel bag full of cash and R-U-N-N-O-F-T, and she’s barely down the sidewalk when she runs into Molly (Ayo Edebiri) and Matthew (Jeremy O. Harris), who take one look at her and decide she’s PERFECT to star in the period-drama film they’re making that might or might not be like a Merchant-Ivory production (they argue about that), alongside current superstar actor Ian (Jacob Elordi). That goes weirdly (and weirdly violently) until Lillian falls in with Mohammed (Rish Shah), who takes her to the secret camp in Vermont where he and his brother and their friends like to have EDM dance parties and do or plan things that involve using AK-47s. Like I said, this is how things tend to go for Lillian.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The grainy, handheld visual aesthetic seems inspired by filmmaker Sean Baker – see Tangerine, Red Rocket and The Florida Project – mixed with the down-the-rabbit-hole-isms of any number of Alice in Wonderland interpretations and political satire that reminds me of Bulworth.

Performance Worth Watching: Over the opening credits, Ryder sings the song ‘Evening Mirror’ while looking into a mirror and immediately thought to myself, we’re going to fall in love with her, aren’t we? And we do – as do the other characters she comes across in the movie. Could it be Ryder’s provocative melange of youthful innocence and knowing mischief that makes this character so alluring?   

Memorable Dialogue: “It seemed so much bigger when I was a kid.” – Caleb, as they walk through the creepy secret corridors of the pizza-restaurant basement

Sex and Skin: Don’t worry, I think that grotesquely pierced penis is a prosthetic.

Our Take: Lillian’s bland enough to be a cypher who’s willing to soak up whatever’s happening around her, passive enough to never fully participate in it, and wily enough to maintain a sense of mystery about her, to the point where we never truly understand what makes her tick. In other films, that would be a detriment, but in The Sweet East, the vague, observational protagonist gives us a common thread to hold onto as Williams and Pinkerton lampoon an array of ideologies existing within the American socio-political tapestry. Dare I use the “anitfa” word to describe the punks? The “incel” word to describe Lawrence? The film gets trickier and braver when it implies that Mohammed’s particular group might be terrorists in training – maybe it wants us to leap to that conclusion, then analyze why – and when the enthusiasm of the young filmmakers’ jumbled and confused approach to making art blurs into incoherence. 

So: Dare I use words like “liberal” or “conservative” or “right” or “left”? The film doesn’t, and that’s why it feels anarchic and more than a little unhinged, as Williams’ handheld camera frequently zooms in on Ryder’s wide-eyed face and follows her from one ridiculous situation to the next – and as the screenplay puts verboten language in the mouth of our protagonist (an f-word, an r-word) as trollish provocation. The Sweet East seems unwilling to label anything, at least verbally, and prefers to ridicule the core tenets of various American ideologies by simply depicting them, quite literally, lost in the woods: The punks can’t find the rural locale to counter-protest. Lawrence and Lillian stroll down forest paths. The film shoot sets up in a field, with producers screaming and yelling at props people struggling to generate a proper snowstorm. The religious fundamentalists set up a camp in the middle of nowhere. Everybody’s separate. Nobody’s in the heart of a population center, where the extremes intermingle and average out to a livable society. You know, the ol’ American melting pot.

As goes with episodic meanders like this, some parts work better than others. The chapter with Rex playing a very quietly bewildered and titillated creep generates interpersonal tension that could sustain an entire film; the film-industry satire feels like it comes from a place of deep knowing (as it should, of course), and layers on the jokes appropriately. Regardless, all of these silly overtures are pretty funny, if not particularly subtle. But who says life in modern America is at all understated? It’s loud as hell around here, and the unimpressed and nonplussed and slightly winkingly knowing look on Ryder’s face offers a bit of welcome respite. Maybe semi-cynical detachment is the only way to survive the turmoil.

Our Call: Don’t mistake The Sweet East for a focused narrative – it’s a borderline-experimental look at what appears to be the failing American experiment. Should we be laughing? Maybe not, but here we are anyway. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.