Narcissist

In Tangerine and The Florida Project, Sean Baker rendered hardscrabble lives in carnival colours. Now he turns his eye to an ageing porn actor. By Ryan Gilbey.

Not for nothing is Red Rocket set against the backdrop of the 2016 presidential primaries, with Donald Trump on television warning of the fraudulence of an election that hasn’t happened yet. One of the ironies of Red Rocket is that a comic character study of a predatory narcissist should look so mouth-wateringly delicious. In Tangerine and The Florida Project, he proved that stories steeped in poverty need not look correspondingly dour. Raylee (Suzanna Son) is a chirpy 17-year-old Donut Hole employee who goes by the name “Strawberry” and proves amenable to the idea of him using the shop to sell weed. This is also the day Mikey realises what he wants. Like Monica Vitti in Antonioni’s film, Mikey Davies (Simon Rex), the hero of Red Rocket, is dwarfed intimidatingly by smoke stacks, factories and petrochemical refineries.