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Lick the Star
Nov. 18th, 2019 07:59 amI am approaching the end of my quest to watch Sofia Coppola’s entire filmography. Now that I’ve seen her early short film “Lick the Star,” the only movie left is The Bling Ring.
“Lick the Star” centered on a group of middle school girls, particularly their leader, Chloe, who has recently adopted “Lick the Star” as a catchphrase. What does it mean? asks Kate, who has been out of school for a few days with a broken leg. Chloe replies, You’ve read Flowers in the Attic, haven’t you? After a little more ribbing, she reveals that Lick the Stars is a code name for plot she devised after reading Flowers in the Attic: it’s Kill the Rats, backwards. Like the evil grandmother in Flowers in the Attic, Chloe wants to poison people with arsenic.
In Chloe’s case, she wants to slip arsenic into the sandwiches of a few boys she doesn’t like (to make them really sick, not murder them, Chloe insists, but do we really think she knows how much arsenic would accomplish one and not the other?) , and she’s recruited her friends to help her. They seem considerably less enthusiastic about the plan (one of them looks up antidotes; another stalls on getting a particular boy’s locker combination), but none of them can stand up to her until after Chloe’s downfall for unrelated reasons.
Chloe’s history class is studying the Civil War; later, Chloe comments with amazement that if the war had never happened, her friend Nadine (who is black) might be a slave. Through the gossip-telephone, soon people believe that Chloe said Nadine should be a slave - and finally, now that her prestige is already at low ebb, Chloe’s friends tell the whole school what “Lick the Star” means, and she’s widely ostracized.
The short film’s haunting effect arises from the fact that, if this unrelated piece of gossip hadn’t brought Chloe down, her friends might have just rolled with her plan. They displayed no enthusiasm for it, they might have even carried it out with repugnance, but they were unwilling or unable to stop her. It’s like a little totalitarian dictatorship in miniature.
“Lick the Star” centered on a group of middle school girls, particularly their leader, Chloe, who has recently adopted “Lick the Star” as a catchphrase. What does it mean? asks Kate, who has been out of school for a few days with a broken leg. Chloe replies, You’ve read Flowers in the Attic, haven’t you? After a little more ribbing, she reveals that Lick the Stars is a code name for plot she devised after reading Flowers in the Attic: it’s Kill the Rats, backwards. Like the evil grandmother in Flowers in the Attic, Chloe wants to poison people with arsenic.
In Chloe’s case, she wants to slip arsenic into the sandwiches of a few boys she doesn’t like (to make them really sick, not murder them, Chloe insists, but do we really think she knows how much arsenic would accomplish one and not the other?) , and she’s recruited her friends to help her. They seem considerably less enthusiastic about the plan (one of them looks up antidotes; another stalls on getting a particular boy’s locker combination), but none of them can stand up to her until after Chloe’s downfall for unrelated reasons.
Chloe’s history class is studying the Civil War; later, Chloe comments with amazement that if the war had never happened, her friend Nadine (who is black) might be a slave. Through the gossip-telephone, soon people believe that Chloe said Nadine should be a slave - and finally, now that her prestige is already at low ebb, Chloe’s friends tell the whole school what “Lick the Star” means, and she’s widely ostracized.
The short film’s haunting effect arises from the fact that, if this unrelated piece of gossip hadn’t brought Chloe down, her friends might have just rolled with her plan. They displayed no enthusiasm for it, they might have even carried it out with repugnance, but they were unwilling or unable to stop her. It’s like a little totalitarian dictatorship in miniature.
