I recently watched Moonrise Kingdom which starred Kara Hayward. Since I liked the movie, I searched for other films with the same actors. I found "To The Stars" starring Kara Hayward. She was about 7 years older than her role in Moonrise Kingdom. Most of this film focuses on Kara's character, Iris. A "cool" city girl Maggie befriends outcast Iris, and their close friendship develops. Later on, the story shifts focus to Maggie. Her father moved the family to the small town, because as he saw it, Maggie disgraced them somehow in the big city.
I enjoyed watching Iris' transformation into a self assured young adult with Maggie's help. I felt extremely saddened once I realized that the point of the movie was to show how the small town people had extremely small minds. They couldn't handle anyone who was gay in their town. They immediately went to run poor Hazel out of town. The interesting thing is that Maggie didn't have a gay relationship with Iris. You would have thought from the build up that might happen. Iris totally understood her friend. Maggie had an attraction to the hair stylist "Hazel" who was also gay. Hazel was living a lie in the town pretending that her husband died in the war, when it was actually her brother who died. In the year 2020, it seems totally outrageous to me that someone could think that their child is damaged for being gay. It was tragic to see a father beat his beautiful daughter because she's "being bad" just by being herself. This was painful to watch, but it's part of our history. Unfortunately there are probably still plenty of people in 2020 who have similar feelings.
I suppose the teens at the high school treated Iris in an awful way because they didn't understand her either. There were a bunch of self centered ignorant people in that town! I am sure the film was also saying that religious teachings were cruel. I am a religious person, and I will say from experience that not all religions or churches are the same. For me, people who love each other are not the problem. We have so much hate and violence in the world, I don't think it makes any sense at all to add even more hate. People who love are not the problem.
EDITS AFTER READING OTHER REVIEWS:
There were a number of other user reviews who thought Iris had a gay relationship with Maggie. I think they must have been watching a different movie than me!! Maggie in one emotional moment kissed Iris, but Iris didn't return the kiss, and Maggie became embarrassed for acting on her impulse. Iris tried to tell her she wasn't mad at her, but Maggie took off. Even though they swam nude in the pond, neither one seemed interested in a sexual relationship. They were friends. When Iris decided to swim nude, it was more of an act of freedom or rebellion. Iris was attracted to boys from the beginning of the film. I never felt anything sexual between the two friends Maggie and Iris. I just felt close friendship and trust.
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