Electrick Children

Rachel lives in a fundamentalist Mormon community in Utah. Music is forbidden at home. One night she finds a cassette player in the cellar and listens to the song on it. Shortly afterwards she is found to be pregnant. She says she has been with nobody and believes the cause was the song. The community does not believe her and decides to marry her off. Rachel runs to Las Vegas, looking for the person who sang it. Rebecca Thomas writes and directs in her first film. Julia Garner plays Rachel. The director grew up in a Mormon family in Las Vegas and the narrative rests on that knowledge; the community is not drawn as a caricature. The idea is that belief is a matter of interpretation. Rachel believes in a miracle and those around her do not; the narrative refuses to say which is right and carries that to the end. The Las Vegas section is built as a contrast, and the city is not offered as deliverance either; Rachel does not idealise the lives of the young people there. Julia Garner was newly known at the time and the performance carries the film. The image is soft and overexposed; the desert light is used as a texture inside the narrative. Who it is for: viewers who like American independent cinema and quiet films built on belief. Who it is not for: the narrative is loose, little happens, and the ending is left unresolved.