A visually and musically thrilling picture, American Honey, British director Andrea Arnold’s fourth film, is also the first one that is set and shot entirely in America. The US rights to this picture, which premiered at Cannes Festival (in competition) were acquired during the festival by Focus Features.

If there is such a thing as an international festival director, Arnold fits the label perfectly.  I have followed her career from her first two shorts, Milk (1998) and Dog (2001), which screened in Cannes Festival in the smallest but most cerebral and innovative sidebar, Semaine de la Critique.  In 2005, Wasp her third short, won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short.

Arnold then went on to write and direct two original features, Red Road (2006) and Fish Tank (2009), starring Michael Fassbender, both of which received the Cannes Festival Jury Prize in their respective years.

Refusing to be typecast as a filmmaker, Arnold has made films that have little in common except her determination to express a visionary, if also idiosyncratic, voice. Take, for instance, her 2011 audacious but not entirely effective adaptation of Emily Bronte’s literary classic, Wuthering Heights, which played at the Venice Film Festival.

So far Arnold has been a festival art director, little known in the US, but her new picture, American Honey, may change that. It’s truly her breakthrough and breakout film, which likely will divide critics, may find a niche audience due to its subject matter, characters, and dazzling style. American Honey makes a contribution to two established genres, the road movie, and the youth subculture feature, though it plays with and twist and turns the conventions of these formats in an unpredictable way.

Arnold was initially inspired by a revelatory New York Times article, written in 2007 by Ian Urbina, “Door to Door: Long Days, Slim Rewards; For Youth, a Grim Tour on Magazine Crews,” which describes disparate groups of youngsters (mostly teenagers and twentysomethings), who are hired by greedy, unregulated companies to crisscross the country and literally go from door to door, trying to peddle magazine subscriptions.  (In an ironic way, they may represent the new, postmodern, anti-version of old-school traveling salesmen).

Fascinated by this subculture, which is uniquely American, Arnold has decided to describe on the big screen with her own personal voice, enhanced by the fantastic cinematography of the brilliant and versatile Robbie Ryan (whose vastly different images can be seen this year in Cannes in another competition entry, Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake.

To prepare for her American film, Arnold took to the road with one crew, getting to know them better, the way they talk, make love (or rather sex) often in public, sell products in houses they visit or invade, sleep in cheap motels—in other words, she was able to capture the manners and mores of a very particular lifestyle from the inside, though as writer-director, she still imposes her authorial voice on the proceedings.

For a nearly three-hour film (163 minutes), American Honey has a slight narrative and only a skeleton of a plot.  But the film is truly rewarding—pure cinema—on a sensory, emotional, and experiential level. Of the dozen or so members of the ensemble, only three or four emerge as fully developed characters.  The protagonist is a beautiful adolescent girl, prophetically named Star, played by Sasha Lane, who’s only 20, in such a natural yet compelling mode that I have no doubts, she would become a Hollywood star.  Exuding erotic appeal and boundless charm, without even trying, Lane plays her as a little lost girl.  Like many of her other mates, she is a runaway, hailing from a troubled home, and lacking any sense of self or identity.  As such, she is open to any new experience that (she thinks) would bring meaning to her previously boring life.

Star’s first encounter with the gang’s leader, Jake (Shia LaBeouf, well cast), in a Wall-Mart store is brilliantly staged, based on the exchange of lengthy erotic looks, and set to a terrific song, Rihanna’s 2011 hit “We Found Love.’ Before long, she falls hard for Jake, only to learn that his emotional and sexual life is quite complicated, as he is involved with another, tough, business-like woman (Riley Keough), and so their love affair needs to remain totally private, which proves frustrating to Star.  This is especially true of their sexual involvement.  There are at least two hot sex scenes, one set in a car while Jake is driving, the other on the grass in broad daylight, in front of the house they had just visited.

Never dull, even when the group is driving from one local to another and thus confined to the interiors of a van, American Honey boasts rapid temp, dazzling images as the landscape changes, and exciting music.  Speaking of the soundtrack: We all know that no road trip or road movie is possible without using great music, especially for youngsters who spend countless time in their vans or motels.  The music in American Honey is a touchstone for the characters, an expression for their feelings–it is the everyday poetry of their lives!

But perhaps above all, it’s the film’s sense of vividness and authenticity that are its strongest selling points. Of the fifteen youngsters who play the crew members no less than eleven had never acted before, and it’s unclear at this point whether or not and how many would pursue professional acting careers.  With the exception of Gus Van Sant, whose film’s characters are played by amateurs or ordinary youth, most Hollywood movies rely on actors who look and behave like stars even when they play teenagers.

One month before pre-production began, Arnold and her casting team visited Florida’s Panama City Beach during Spring Break, yet another distinctly American institution that attracts thousands of young students every year. Taking a walk on the beach, director Arnold spotted Sasha Lane, a college freshman from Texas who had previously never acted. In a bold measure, Arnold decided right away to cast Lane in the lead role of Star.

This–and other audacious–directorial decisions contribute to the overall success of American Honey, resulting in a visceral experience and emotional impact that easily overcome the film’s other shortcomings.