Red Rocket

Directed by Sean Baker

Running time: 2hrs8 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE

Simon Rex in Red Rocket, reviewed at the 74th Cannes Film Festival

I like to think there’s an unofficial competition every year at Cannes for which director can work the most startling needle-drop into their film. This year’s festival has already seen several strong contenders, from Vanessa Paradis in Ahed’s Knee to The Zombies in Titane, but Sean Baker goes hard for the gold in the very opening seconds of his riotous new film Red Rocket: as washed-up porn star Mikey (Simon Rex) wakes up bleary-eyed and blinking on a coach to the armpit outskirts of Texas City, the synthetic string crescendo of NSync’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’ fills the soundtrack. That ‘90s earworm continues at full volume as Mikey alights and orients himself in glum residential streets, before cutting out abruptly, stranding us in mundane, rhythm-free reality.

It’s a witty choice on several levels: the song’s heyday is about as old as Mikey’s, while the chorus repeats a sentiment that he seems to hear a lot in life. Like much of Baker’s work — including The Florida Project and Tangerine — Red Rocket is a jagged, jangly character study from the scruffier margins of American society. As with Tangerine’s casually compassionate depiction of sex workers, his latest puts a human face on the porn industry, albeit not an obviously sympathetic one. Mikey is a walking red flag: having run out of dough in California after a long but dimming porn career, he has returned to his hometown to crash with his reluctant, estranged ex Lexi (Bree Elizabeth Elrod), a former porn colleague who got out earlier, and deal a bit of dope while he figures out his next move.

When he meets and charms button-cute 17-year-old cashier Strawberry (delightful newcomer Suzanna Son) at the local doughnut shop, the wheels in his empty head start turning: he reckons the winsome kid, herself restless for a life outside Texas City, could be his ticket back into the adult industry. Thus does Red Rocket walk a tricky line: it’s a frank, discomfiting depiction of grooming and exploitation, but told from the desperate perspective of the older party, himself gnarled and weary after decades of others’ use. Baker further provokes with his slamming tonal transitions and overlaps: the film frequently knots stomach-churning tragedy and farcical, high-pitched comedy into the same scene. Set on the eve of Trump’s election, his vision of sidelined America is both desolately ugly and garishly beautiful, painting squat streetscapes in jubilant sherbet hues. And in casting the vitally charismatic Rex — an MTV VJ turned rapper turned regular of the Scary Movie franchise — in the role of a lifetime, Baker further reminds us that respectability is an overrated virtue.

RED ROCKET (2021) Written by Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch | Shot by Drew Daniels | Edited by Sean Baker

Selected for the Competition at the 74th Cannes Film Festival