Wilkes-Barre is the county seat of Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County. That is to say, it’s in the heart of Trump country. Long a bastion of Democratic-voting union workers and coal miners, the county’s descent into hard economic times was a key harbinger of the kinds of shifts that produced the 2016 election result. After Obama won by 5 points in 2012, Donald Trump pulled off a shocking 20-point victory in the county last year, going a long way to swing the Keystone State.
Luzerne County also provides the unlikely backdrop for writer/director Deb Shoval’s debut film, AWOL, which will get a screening Saturday, March 4, at the Gasparilla International Film Festival in Tampa. A quiet film of tremendous power, AWOL tells a story of bruised but not quite broken people trying to find hope in a place that’s grown hopeless.
Lola Kirke — star of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle and last year’s Noah Baumbach feature Mistress America — plays Joey, a shy but spunky tomboy who is in the process of being pushed forcefully by her mother (Dale Soules) to escape her dead-end town by enlisting in the Army. Joey is interested in the prospect of seeing the world, even if only through the scope of a rifle. At the same time, she’s grown comfortable with her humble place in the world, selling ice cream for a local dairy at the county fair and playing music in a folk band with her stoner brother-in-law (Ted Welch).
Complication arrives in the form of Rayna (Breeda Wool), a sensuous wild child a good 10 years Joey’s senior who signals from her first appearance on screen, tousling her flashy mane of teased blonde hair, that she is trouble with a capital T. She makes quick work of seducing Joey, who only belatedly learns that Rayna is not quite what she seems. Though she might be sexually adventurous, Rayna is actually a housewife with two daughters and an abusive, though frequently absent, long-haul trucker husband (Bill Sage).
As their relationship unfolds, the dilemma Joey faces is whether the pull she feels to stay will become an anchor that robs her of her chance at opportunity. Her sister, brother-in-law and mom all warn her off Rayna, whom they characterize as the trashy welfare queen daughter of a meth head. Joey can see there is truth in their admonitions, particularly in how she is left out in the cold whenever Rayna’s husband returns to town. But the passion she shares with this loose cannon who shares her background and culture entices her, in ways that her date with a wealthier, classier, more educated woman proves not to.
Most of all, Joey wants badly to believe in another person, and in the fantasy that they could run away together to Vermont, where the stares of strangers don’t feel quite so judgmental.
Shoval shows a steady, patient hand behind the camera, allowing the drama to play out much more on Kirke and Wool’s expressive faces than in the dialogue they are given to say. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
AWOL
4 out of 5 stars
Not rated. Directed by Deb Shoval.
Starring Lola Kirke, Breeda Wool, Ted Welch.
Screens Saturday, March 4, 8:45 p.m. at Centro Ybor, Theater 1
This article appears in Mar 2-9, 2017.
