The main reason for watching this is simply that it is the first film by an actor who has proved to be one of the top in the field. And she shows from the start that she has always been one to watch. The character goes through a variety of changes, largely, but not only, of maturation and Chastain virtually plays different characters across the film, exuberantly traversing a range of incarnations, beginning as a plain, abused yet naive country teen and going through more than one form of sophistication, largely fortuitously. The story itself is somewhere between the Perils of Pauline and Candide; structure is not a big concern here, just that the protagonist go through many trials. The then unknown Chastain plays these changes like a musical prodigy given successive pieces by very different composers and playing through each flawlessly. One physical note might seem to focus more on her appearance than her talent, but in fact is slightly uncanny. Early on, she shows her breasts, which are small, uninviting, those of a naive, half-formed young woman. Yet later, in an erotic sequence, she shows those very same breasts - physically unchanged, in no way augmented - and they are suddenly entrancing, womanly. The only change is internal, in the character's sense of her self at each moment. Not all of the story makes sense or is gracefully developed; Chastain is, in a word, better than her material here. But she is already the major talent now known to all.
