Runaway
Genre: Drama
Director: Xavier Dolan
Writer: Mo Buck
Based on the French Canadian television series
Cast: Haley Lu Richardson, Caleb Landry Jones, Evan Rachel Wood, Trevante Rhodes, Ethan Hawke, Hilary Swank, Susan Sarandon, Antoine-Olivier Pilon, Denzel Whitaker, Katherine Langford, Juno Temple
Plot: Fanny (Haley Lu Richardson) is talking over the phone with her friend/on and off boyfriend Frederic (Denzel Whitaker). They talk about the trip to New York they have planned with their friends. Frederic knows money has always been an issue with Fanny’s family. She’s afraid to ask them for money and he’s giving her the necessary courage to go and ask them. Feeling confident, Fanny gets off the phone and walks to her mother Mary-Ann (Hilary Swank) for money to go to New York. She really feels that her daughter wants to go to New York but they simply don’t have the cash, so she’s heartbroken to say no. Fanny is upset about this, thinking her family still wants to favor her older brother over her. Mark (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) is on the local canoe team, coached by no other than her father, Bill (Ethan Hawke). They’re constantly paying for trips for them, but never for Fanny. Upset, Fanny announces to her mother that she’ll go out tonight, in downtown Montreal. God, her mother hated that place, especially the night clubs. She tries to recomfort herself by being with her husband, but he doesn’t seem to care, he wants to prepare for the canoe competition coming up. Mary-Ann has been desperately trying to give their relationship a much needed shot in the arm, but all her advances have been declined by Bill, the once attentional husband. He’s not the man she fell in love with and that thought breaks her heart little by little, every time she realises it.
Fanny meets with her friends, Frederic and Jessica (Katherine Langford). They enter in a trendy and packed nightclub in downtown Montreal. Fanny is still bummed out about her mother’s refusal to lend her money to go to New York with her friends, so they offer to pay for her drinks for the night and they want her to have as much fun as possible. She isn’t really in the mood to have fun, so she tells her friend she has to go in the bathroom, but instead, she sits at the bar, feeling bummed out. She’s approached by a mysterious girl (Evan Rachel Wood), who asks her why a pretty face like her is feeling so sad tonight. She says her name is Natacha. Fanny explains the situation to Natacha and feels really good after she’s able to be harsh about her parents like that. They start talking about their different hobbies. Fanny talks a great deal about her passion of dancing. Natacha says she has to leave and leaves enters her phone number in Fanny’s cellphone. She says she might have work to offer her if she wants to go to New York with her friends. Fanny’s feeling a little better after Natacha made her offer and she goes back with her friends, who ask her where the hell she’s been.
The following morning, Mary-Ann wakes Fanny up and discovers that her daughter is in a terrible hangover. Fanny opens her cellphone and finds out she received a message from Natacha, the girl she met at the club last night and she’s offering her a job as a dancer in one of her friend’s music video. Fanny texts her back and says that she accepts the offer. Natacha answers immediately and sends her the details. While she’s caring her daughter, Mary-Ann expresses the desire to do everything she can to try to send her to New York with her friends. Fanny says she found a job to the amazement of her mother. She tries to ask where she found a job, but her daughter refuses to answer. During this time, Fanny’s brother Mark is training with the rest of the canoe team and shows little effort, compared to his teammates. His father, Bill, comes to him and screams at him that he should show more efforts and that he’ll not spare him because he’s his son.
The following day, Fanny meets in downtown Montreal with Natacha who drives her to the video clip’s rehearsal. She meets with the artist, who goes by Damian (Caleb Landry Jones), a wannabe rapper, whose music, while not really good, is a huge hit amongst the female teenage crowd. Fanny, not what you would call a fan, is still starstruck by the presence of someone some people admire, including her best friend, Jessica. He has cocky attitude and feels superior to everyone present. Fanny thinks he’s cute, but he doesn’t seem to notice her. They start the rehearsal, Fanny notices most of the other girls are there for their looks and not necessarily their talents and thinks she’s the best dancer. At the end of the day, after about six hours of rehearsal, they send the girls home. Natacha grabs Fanny by the arm and say they will both go to a bar, she reluctantly accepts.
Fanny comes back home at about 2 a.m. and is a little bit drunk. She unlocks the door and sneaks into her room. She doesn’t know that Bill, her father is still up and watching her as she closes the door of her room.
Before Natacha goes back to her place, she stops by Damian’s. She urges Damian to accept a small gig at a birthday party. She says it may be an opportunity to meet some new girls. Damian reluctantly accepts, claiming he’s too big to do birthday parties anymore (when in fact, he’s not really a household name yet) and tries to call his contact for the gig.
The following morning, as Fanny gets up, her parents are sitting in the living room. They say they need to talk to her. They ask her about her whereabouts in the last couple of days. They say it’s not in her nature to go out every night and to come back drunk. She tells them that she’s just hanging out with her friends, Frederic and Jessica. Bill asks her not to lie to him, because they called them last night and they both said Fanny wasn’t with them. She tells her parents she made new friends and she was hanging out with them. Fanny leaves the living room. Mary-Ann fears these new friends aren’t a good influence for their Fanny. Bill agrees and he gets up. He grabs Fanny by the arm in the kitchen and says she’s grounded for a week. She argues but he doesn’t want to hear it. She says it’s Jessica’s birthday tomorrow and she begs him to go. He accepts, but she needs to be back by midnight.
Unlike Fanny’s, Jessica’s parents are rich and didn’t hold back for their daughter’s birthday. Jessica arrives at Fanny’s home with a limo, where Fanny meets with Frederic and other girls. There’s a lot of champagne back there and some of them are already drunk. When they arrive, Fanny finds out that Jessica’s parents have hired no other than Damian himself to perform at the party. He starts rapping as Fanny looks around, in case she sees Natacha, who always seems to be with Damian, but this time, she isn’t. She enjoys his performance and just hangs out with her friends.
After a long night of partying, Damian finally stops signing. He gets off the small stage they built and he goes straight to see Fanny. He says he remembers her from her video clip’s rehearsal and he says she was the best dancer there. He says he noticed her right away because of how pretty she is. He says they should go to his place to sign a contract for her to appear in the video. Completely drunk, Fanny accepts and follows Damian back to his place, where they didn’t sign a contract at all and instead made love all night.
When she wakes up the following morning, she can honestly say that she’s in love with Damian. They start to get intimate again, when Damian receives a phone call. He answers and he has a heated argument with Natacha. Fanny tries to not listen, but can’t restrain herself from eavesdropping. When he hangs up, Damian’s kind of angry. Fanny asks him what’s wrong and he says he may not have the money to do the video after all. She says that she could do it for free if that would help. Damian answers that he’s in love with her and he wants it to be serious. Fanny can’t resist the charm of the young man. He says that when he’s with her, all his problems go away. He says he will buy her a gift to thank her, but Fanny thinks it’s not necessary. She gets a call from her grand-mother. Suddenly, all her world comes crashing down. She answers the phone and her grand-mother, Mary (Susan Sarandon) asks her where she is. She says she’s with her friends. Mary says her parents think she ran away and Fanny assures her that it’s not the case. During this time, Damian receives his good friend Carlo (Trevante Rhodes). He asks him how his latest crush in bed was last night, referring to Fanny, of course. Mary heard what Damian just said and she says goodbye to her grand-daughter. Before she has a chance to hang up, Fanny begs her grandmother not to rat her out to her parents, she’s happy, for once and she doesn’t want her bubble to burst. She says her parents think she ran away, but she assures that’s not the case. She says she’s seeing someone, and her parents shouldn’t know about it. She knows he’s the one, he's the only one who can make her happy right now, and she doesn’t want it be over, right after it started. Her grandmother, out of fear that her granddaughter will resent her if she rats her out, accepts to keep it a secret. After all, she wants to keep a good relationship with Fanny.
There’s a state of emergency in Bill and Mary-Ann’s household. They desperately try to reach Fanny, who doesn’t answer her phone anymore. They try to call Frederic and Jessica, but still asleep from their wild night don’t answer. They couldn’t answer anyway, their phones are dead and they didn’t plugged them in. Mark tries to contact the police, but Bill doesn’t want them to get involved. He thinks it could hurt their reputation. Bill screams at his boy to not get involved, he doesn’t need that kind of distraction ahead of his big competition and neither does he, by the way. Mary-Ann tries to call her mother and she says she talked to Fanny earlier. She says she was with her friends and that there’s nothing to be worried about, Fanny is safe, that’s what she told her. Mary-Ann calms down and Bill argues with her that she told her so. Once again, Mary-Ann was panicking for nothing and everything was alright. These kind of arguments aren’t the best for a couple trying to keep their relationship alive and Mary-Ann knows it. She runs in the bedroom and start crying as Bill grabs Mark to force him to train ahead of the competition. This whole incident prevented them to train and he doesn’t want to let it affect his shot at a scholarship, right?
Fanny arrives at Jessica’s place, where she fakes being asleep, until someone gets up. Frederic gets up first and he asks her where she’s been all night. They’re soon joined by Jessica. She tells them about her night of passion with Damian, not leaving out any details, including his lack of fund for the video and the gift he’s going to buy her. Both of her friends say that it looks like Damian will use her as a prop, all the signs are there. He’s supposedly the love of his life after a couple of hours and he’s buying her gifts. She tells them to fuck off, because Damian’s really in love with her. She receives a text from Damian. He says he wants her to come back to his place, he has her gift. She leaves her friends and goes back to Damian’s place.
Natacha eventually arrived at Damian’s after Fanny left. Carlo and her argue with him, because he’s not bringing in any money anymore. Carlo talks about the girl he saw earlier (Fanny) to Natacha and she says she’s the perfect victim and she could bring in a lot of money. She young, pretty and innocent, the perfect prey. Damian disagrees, but when Carlo says he’s willing to withdraw the financing of his video if he doesn’t accept, he texts Fanny to come back, as Carlo wants to test the merchandise. Fanny arrives at Damian’s. The gang parties all night and Fanny forgets all about her gift after she’s drugged by Carlo. She’s enjoying herself at first and starts to make love with Damian, but she soon passes out and Carlo and Damian rape her. Natacha has everything on camera. The following morning, Fanny has no recollection of what happened. After she notices she has more than 30 missed calls from her parents, she decides to call her grandmother. Mary says that they’re incredibly worried about her and that she refuses to return their calls. She says she gets what she’s living through. It’s the first time she’s in love and she wants everything to go well. She suggests Fanny to go home and to talk about it with her parents. She promised she didn’t rat her out, but she had to opportunity to do it, but she didn’t break her promise. She thanks her grandmother for her support and she wishes that she’d have such a nice bond with her own mother, who seems to hate her for some reason, as do all the teenagers in their rebel phase.
Against Bill’s wishes, Mary-Ann gave up and called the police. Her daughter hasn’t been home in several hours and she doesn’t answer her phone anymore. On top of all that, Frederic and Jessica don’t answer their calls and nobody seems to know where she is. Mary-Ann questions her mother, the last one who talked with her. When Fanny arrives, she notices that her parents called the police and they officially declared that they thought she ran away. The police leaves and add that they shouldn’t waste the time of officers when it could be put to good use elsewhere. Bill starts to scream at his daughter, that they were all worried about her and that it distracted him and her brother for their big competition coming up, a canoe competition that could dictate her brother’s future. Mary-Ann adds that she was also worried that her daughter had been kidnapped. Fanny tells everyone that she now has a boyfriend. Her mother disagrees and says that she’s not ready. Fanny has had enough. She reproaches her parents to prioritize her brother in front of her, which is something even Mark admits, but Bill refuses to say that he cares more about Mark than Fanny. She tells her mother that if she would be more focused on her kids instead of trying to revive her dying relationship with her husband, a relationship that obviously doesn’t make them happy anymore, obviously, she would see that her daughter grew up and that she’s ready to live her life the fullest, just like Mark, the prodigy who has all the attention. When she stops, nobody says a word. Mary finally breaks the silence. She says that she supports Fanny in whatever she wants to do. She’s almost a grown woman now and she makes decisions by herself. She suggest that everyone go on a weekend to the cabin. The boys could train for the competition and the girls could have some girl time. She reminds everyone that family should support each other, not separate them. Following the wise words, they share one emotional group hug. They all go to prepare their stuff for the weekend in their room. Mary-Ann and Bill have a discussion about their relationship. Mary-Ann says she’s ready to give it one last shot, but Bill says he will think about it. Mary-Ann starts to cry and she begs him to do the right thing for the children, not just Mark, Fanny too. Bill starts to cry too and he kisses her. While she’s preparing her stuff, Fanny texts Damian and tells him what happened. He says she shouldn’t go out for the weekend, but she has no other choice.
Damian meets with Carlo and Natacha who decide to punish Fanny for going away when they needed her the most. Natacha edits the video and cuts the part where Fanny’s raped. She sends the part in which she has fun to Frederic and Jessica on Facebook. Carlo says to Damian that he should make her work a lot when she comes back, as he thinks she has the real potential to be a money-maker. He agrees. During this time, Fanny enjoys some time with her family, especially her brother Mark, with whom she finds out that she has common interests. relationship. Things are starting to work out between her parents. Mary-Ann takes her on a walk in the woods and she announces that found some money for to go to New York with her friends, just like she wanted. Fanny is overwhelmed, and she hugs her mother. Everything seems to go well in the family, right now.
When she comes back from the weekend, Fanny texts her friends that she’ll be able to come to New York after all. They show her the video they received from Natacha and she feels ashamed. She decides to go back to Damian’s to learn what happened.
Damian is still with Carlo and Natacha when Fanny arrives. She asks them why did they send the video to her friends and Carlo says they didn’t want her to go away for a whole weekend and she did anyway, so she had to pay the price. Both him and Natacha leave, Damian and Fanny are now all alone. He pours her a drink and he clearly puts something in it, unbeknown to Fanny. To try to excuse himself for what happened, he bought her necklace. She kisses him to thank him and they start to make love. Fanny says she’s not feeling well and Damian says it’s alright. He says he has to leave for a while and she can stay here. She lies on the bed, naked. She feels weird and at one point, she passes out from the drug he put in her drink. Damian meets with a man outside the apartment. He gives a chunk of money and the man goes upstairs. He opens the unlocked door and he finds Fanny, naked and unconscious. He starts to rape her until she wakes up and she begs him to stop, but there’s nothing she can do to make him stop. Crying, she just gives up and wait until the suffering is over. When the man is done, he leaves, without acknowledging Fanny, just like she was some object. Fanny finally falls asleep after crying pretty much all night. The following morning, she wakes up with Damian by her side. She tells him everything that happened while he was gone and he says that he should have protected her, he should have been there for her. To pardon himself, he gives her money and it’s enough for New York, but in exchange she needs to never report what happened to the police. Damian was really clear on that. Fanny kisses him and thanks him once again.
Bill and Mary-Ann are in shock, their daughter ran away again, but they can’t find a reason this time. They called the police again. They listen to their deposition, until Frederic and Jessica show up at their door. They show Bill, Mary, Mary-Ann and Mark the video Natacha sent them. They also tell them about what she said to them at day after the party. Bill starts to panic, his daughter is caught in some sort of prostitution ring. The police refuses to confirm it yet. They say that if she ever comes back, they’re going to have to bring her to a juvenile center. Everyone starts to question Mary, who seems to know a lot about this boyfriend. Mary once again keeps her mouth shut, fearing that her granddaughter will resent her. She says she thinks his name is Damian and that he’s a singer, but she’s not sure. Her memory has been tricking her as of late, so everyone cuts her some slack.
Fanny and Damian are making love in the middle of the day and Carlo decides that it’s a good time to show up. Damian covers himself and they go in another room to discuss. Fanny overhears them talking about the payment from the guy who came here yesterday. Carlo reminds Damian that the deal was that she was conscious and into it and that it was the opposite. Carlo wants the money now, but Damian gave it to Fanny. They start to fight and Fanny dresses up and leave, she finally understands what’s happening. A couple of minutes after she left, she receives a text from Natasha, if she rats them out, her video goes online and all of her friends will see her.
Bill and Mark are at the canoe training and Bill is pushing his students to the limit. He’s clearly affected by everything. Mark talks to him and he makes him notice that he’s driving everyone crazy. They share an embrace, while they’re both crying. Bill receives a call, they found Fanny.
Fanny was placed in a juvenile center after she was found. She sits in a room with Anna (Juno Temple), a former prostitute herself and together, they go over what happened in the last few days and Anna points out the signs that Damian was, in fact, a pimp. Fanny can’t believe that she felt for it, but she truly believes Damian was in love with her. In fact, she says that he was forced to do it by other people and that he would never do that to her. Anna confesses that she was really in love with her pimp herself and that she was in the exact same situation as Fanny, right now, baffled and shocked. She was reticent at first, but Fanny finally decides the give the name of the man she was really in love with. She also mentions Carlo and Natacha. Fanny’s family arrive at juvenile center and they won’t let them see her, to their obvious disappointment. They decide they want to press charges against Damian.
A month later, Fanny goes to the courthouse to testify in front of the jury, accompanied by her loving, reconciliated family. She takes the stand and says everything that happened between them, a difficult experience, for her, her family and her friends.
Two weeks later, Fanny is back in the courtroom as the judge sentences Damian to six years in jail. She’s terrified as she spots Carlo and Natacha in the audience. Both of them were not accused as Damian refused to say they were his partners. After they see Fanny, they both leave the courthouse with their sunglasses on as if nothing happened. After everyone leaves the courthouse, Fanny tells her friend that she really needs to go to New York and they all agree that it would be a good idea. She says that she was sorry that she stopped talking to them and that she should have listened to them instead of falling in love like the stupid idiot she is. In jail, Damian writes a passionate love letter to Fanny, he was really in love with her. After he sends it, he goes back to his cell, where hangs himself.
Fanny speaks with her grandmother. She says that she’s happy that she never broke her word, but she should have. She was in danger and her own ignorance led her there. It’s nice to know that everything tied the family back together and that she can always count on her. They share a hug. Fanny receives the letter from Damian and she decides not to open it. Moments later,she learns of his death in jail. She decides to open it. She lies in her bed, alone and crying.
