The Runaways

There’s a stunt element to the casting of The Runaways: a punked-up, barely legal Kristen Stewart and an underage, barely dressed Dakota Fanning begging for street cred by playing dress-up as Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, respectively, front girls of the ’70s-era, teen proto-punk sensation the Runaways. Watch Dakota strut around in a corset! Look at the chick from Twilight, kissing girls and snorting coke! But under the stylish direction of Floria Sigismondi, what may be a stunt is also a movie worth taking seriously. The film opens in Los Angeles, circa 1975. Brought together by weirdo record producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), the girls develop a “product” based on “women’s libido” in place of women’s lib. Cherie and Joan become fast friends, drinking pilfered booze under a decaying Hollywood sign. Joan is the tomboy Clyde to Cherie’s glam Bonnie. With “I want an orgasm!” as their Fowley-dictated rallying cry, the pushing-­16-year-olds sell the notion that they’re full of cum; young and dumb, it takes them awhile to figure out the dark side of hawking their sexual curiosity. Sigismondi uses abstract imagery to elevate what is otherwise a predictable rock movie. Wide-eyed rise leads to free fall, which leads to rebirth and redemption. There’s a guttural pleasure to be had in riding waves of rock-movie cliché spiked with socio-sexual commentary. It’s only in the latter half, when Sigismondi abandons forward motion and junks the visual daring and feminist questioning, that the film runs into trouble.