Twilight alumni Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning star in this music-fuelled story of the groundbreaking, all girl, teenage rock band of the 1970s: The Runaways. Directed by Floria Sigismondi (whose track record involved making music videos for David Bowie and Sheryl Crowe), the script is based on Neon Angel, Cherie Currie's 1989 memoir. It charts their rise from rebellious Southern California kids to rock stars of the now legendary group that paved the way for future generations of girl bands. The film opens in L.A. in 1975, where, under the Svengali-like influence of rock impresario Kim Fowley (played with great gusto by Michael Shannon), the girls morph from a pioneering band of five teenagers from broken homes into an overnight international rock sensation.

Stewart gives as good as she gets. She's playing Joan 65, the shag-haired guitarist, singer, and songwriter who co-founded The Runaways and went on – after the L.A. band dissolved – to achieve star status as a solo act. Fanning has it tougher as Cherie Currie, a blonde Valley girl moulded by Kim into the band's lead singer and male fantasy pin-up. The much talked about girl-on-girl kiss at the centre of the film is sensitively handled. Cherie and Joan's attraction is less about sex than natural teenage emulation - they want to be each other more than they want to be together - and its consummation, like all of the films most vivid sequences, allows Sigismondi to show off her music-video-honed knack for creating deep wells of feeling without dialogue.