American Honey, now showing at the Arts Picturehouse, plunges you into an exciting and exploitative world of door-to-door magazine subscription sales in a dystopic vision of the United States, rife with drug epidemics, economic inequality and shattered families.

The opening scene of the teenage protagonist Star (Sasha Lane) standing in a dumpster to scavenge for food behind a supermarket announces the flip side of the American Dream. Star decides to break out from her desperate life in Oklahoma when she locks eyes with Jake (Shia LaBeouf), a misfit dancing with his friends in a Walmart. She leaves her younger siblings with a sleazy relative before heading off to Kansas City with Jake and his crew, who offer her the opportunity to become part of their team of itinerant salesmen.

Jake entices Star with the prospect of a job, a surrogate family, and even love. But what starts out as a care-free road trip through the American Midwest slowly turns into a bad trip as unexpected and surreal situations break out. The stifling pattern of work-play-travel echoes the absorbing hip hop and rap soundtrack of the salesmen’s existence.

The question is, which path will Star choose? And does she have a choice? American Honey’s explosive, highly sensual and personal coming-of-age story makes you laugh, yet all the scenes are tinged with an expectation of violence, and a gut feeling that something could go wrong in a split second. While Jake trains Star, he shares his biggest sales secret: judge the potential client in the first split second and adapt your spiel, because you aren’t selling magazines, you’re actually selling yourself. So does Jake actually care about Star, or is it all a mask, as the crew manager Krystal (Riley Keough) tells Star?

British director Andrea Arnold majestically orchestrates this 163-minute epic and immersive experience, and her work was justly awarded the prestigious Jury Prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. The acting is striking and nuanced; Sasha Lane made a riveting film debut as Star, and Riley Keough – Elvis Presley’s granddaughter – was spot on in her interpretation of the ruthless Krystal.

This film echoes Larry Clark and Harmony Korine’s works, such as Kids, Ken Park and Spring Breakers – and most definitely surpasses the latter in cinematic eloquence and narrative nuance. The filmic aesthetics of American Honey are mesmerising and contemporary, with Instagram-ish lighting and a perpetually wavering camera that echoes mobile phone filming.

Go for a ride with American Honey for its coming-of-age story, social exposé of a decaying American society, impressive acting, engrossing soundtrack and beautiful 21st-century American landscape