Simon Rex is a dirt­bag tri­umphant in the trail­er for Sean Baker’s Red Rocket

This year, the Howie Rat­ner Award for Most Hyper­ac­tive, Anx­i­ety-Pro­duc­ing Per­for­mance by an Actor goes to Simon Rex for his turn as a washed-up porn star in Sean Bak­er​’s upcom­ing dra­ma Red Rock­et. Ear­ly reac­tions from the Cannes and New York film fes­ti­vals have brimmed with praise for his appear­ance as the fast-talk­ing, nar­cis­sis­tic Mikey Saber, albeit with the caveat that watch­ing him manip­u­late the peo­ple around him as he tum­bles fur­ther into his own self-destruc­tion makes for a stress­ful experience.

This morn­ing, the first trail­er has appeared online, with a lighter tone than these impres­sions have sug­gest­ed. (The use of NSYNC’s ​“Bye Bye Bye” throws a veil of irony over the dis­rep­utable pro­ceed­ings.) Mikey cuts a swath through the rough­est fringes of Tex­an soci­ety, look­ing for a roof over his head, a warm meal, a warm bed, and a sec­ond chance at mak­ing some­thing of him­self – in that order.

He first tries to shack up with his not-quite-ex-wife Lexi (Bree Elrod), who wants noth­ing to do with the good-for-noth­ing suhm­bitch, but allows him to stay until he gets his life togeth­er. As is his nature, he then abus­es her good­will by strik­ing up a flir­ta­tion with the under­age Straw­ber­ry (Suzan­na Son), who he even­tu­al­ly plans on bring­ing back to Los Ange­les to get him anoth­er shot at adult film stardom.

In her review out of the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, our gal on the scene Han­nah Strong praised Rex as a ​“com­pelling motor­mouth lead, talk­ing him­self in and out of trou­ble.” She went on to add: “…there are some tru­ly riotous moments, and as a char­ac­ter study on how one man’s awful­ness per­me­ates across every­one he meets, this is fas­ci­nat­ing stuff.”

With his last cou­ple of fea­tures Tan­ger­ine and The Flori­da Project, Bak­er has estab­lished him­self as one of the pre-emi­nent chron­i­clers of Amer­i­can pover­ty, with a spe­cial inter­est in its inter­sec­tion with the sex work indus­try, a trend clear­ly set to con­tin­ue here. With humor and pathos, he illus­trates that the col­or­ful char­ac­ters peo­pling his scuzzi­er milieus are like any­one else – try­ing to survive.

Red Rock­et comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 3 Decem­ber. A date for the UK has yet to be set.