Picture of the movie Red Rocket © Drew Daniels
Red Rocket: back on home turf
For his first selection in Competition at the Festival de Cannes, American screenwriter and director Sean Baker treats us to Red Rocket, a film that looks at a porn actor's return to his Texan hometown. Surrounded by the misery unique to those American towns where lost souls wander aimlessly, he must find a way to survive.
He had already tackled sex workers in Tangerine, a film that centres on two Afro-American trans prostitutes, and in The Florida Project, his last film, which had made waves at the Directors' Fortnight in 2017. With Red Rocket, Sean Baker brings us former porn star Mikey Saber, who returns to his hometown where nobody seems to have missed him. Penniless, he finds himself forced to move back in with his frosty ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law. A fan of working with am-dram actors spotted on social media, the director chose former porn actor Simon Rex to play Mikey.
Supported by screenwriter Chris Bergoch, with whom he has worked on four projects in all, and Drew Daniels, a head cameraman from hit series Euphoria, Sean Baker's Red Rocket is a raw and sensitive portrait of Texas, where the struggle to pay rent is a daily fight. After trying his hand at comedy with Greg The Bunny, the series he co-directed, Sean Baker serves up a story shot through with flashes of humour, featuring a complex character blighted by loneliness and misery, with no choice but to brush shoulders with his old demons on his quest for a fresh start.
