The opening shot of "Little Birds" tells us all we need to know about its heroine Lily, a 15-year-old stuck in a deader-than-dead-end town. As she lies in the bath, the camera pans across the pale white skin of her legs until it lands on some deep scars high on her thighs, the marks of a cutter. This girl, however jacked on teen hormones and desirous of life, is damaged, and we sense it's only a matter of time before her self-destruct switch gets flipped.
"Little Birds" is a 2011 film just opening now in Japan for no apparent reason other than that its star, Juno Temple (of "Afternoon Delight"), has the sort of cute, jailbait-y looks that sell here and a bunch of topless scenes.
Less cynically, it could be that someone has recognized that Temple is on the cusp of a career breakthrough; she's been ubiquitous in supporting roles — "The Dark Knight Rises," "Maleficent," "Lovelace," "Black Mass"— but will star in the highly anticipated Martin Scorsese-produced HBO series "Vinyl," starting next month. Either way, Temple takes what could have been a pretty standard coming-of-age indie flick and raises it to another level with a fierce performance.