In the hot, dry climate of Northwest Nevada, a mother drops off her daughter in town, urging her not to come home anytime soon. Cleo (Elsie Fisher) looks away as her mom gives her an unearned dressing-down, cruelly reminding her that she is not above her surroundings. She waits until her mother has already driven away before she responds with futile adolescent anger.
Cleo is effectively on her own for the rest of the film, with her mother never once appearing. Even when Cleo goes missing later in the film, the audience is never formally introduced to her mother. Instead, first-time director Fergus Campbell drops us directly into Cleo’s world — no parents, no rules and every authority figure is obscured, like the unintelligible adults in Peanuts cartoons. From the film’s hand-painted opening title sequence to the occasional intrusion of illustrations throughout the story, Sparks is the kind of microbudget indie that film festivals were made to showcase. Every frame is crafted with care and love for the cinematic form.