LFF Review: Girlhood

I seem to have an excellent track record for picking good final films to see at festivals. (Aside, that is, from the time at Cannes when I stumbled, weary from long queues and hot weather into The Colour of Pomegranates, not expecting a beautiful and still mediation on life) At last year's London Film Festival, my last viewing was a little-known film called 12 Years a Slave which of course never got picked up by a distributor and received any success… And this year I managed to once again pick an absolute gem, in the form of Celene Sciamma's third feature, Girlhood.

The film follows the life of Marieme, (or "Vic", short for victory as she is renamed) as she tries to juggle life in a French banlieue, a difficult home life, first love and new friendship. Her world is suddenly turned upside down when she is befriended by a gang of tough girls, lead by the beautiful and seemingly fearless Lady. Coming of age is by now a well-worn genre, as is the "gang" movie, but Girlhood manages to be a breath of fresh air for one reason - the gang shown here are comprised of young black girls. This may not seem like much, but ask yourself the last time that a young black woman - and in this case, a multitude of them - were really allowed any authority in film. While they may associate with, or even sleep with members of a male gang, Marieme, Lady and co never allow themselves to become gang member's mols. The whole film is focussed on Marieme's decisions and how they effect her life - if she ever becomes a passive figure in the film, that decision is down to her.

With Girlhood, Sciamma offers the best argument for the concept of the Female Gaze in a long time. It's undeniable that she and her camera adore her subjecst. Shot in harsh neon lighting, or in near darkness, Marieme's skin often appears to glow. There are a multitude of shots of female bodies in this film but they always amount to more than just a sum of a few parts. Instead, Sciamma seems enraptured by these girls, and passes this rapture on to the audience. Whether shown dancing to R&B in crop tops and shorts, or in the midst of a ferocious game of rugby, there is no denying that these girls are physically beautiful, but they are never overtly sexualised for a purely male viewpoint. Most refreshingly of all, Sciamma uses this view not just in her camerawork but in her script too. In an intimate scene between the four friends, Marieme shares a memory of walking behind all of them - "All I could think was that you were beautiful, so beautiful." That's not the say that there's no female rivalry in the film - there are ferocious fights between Lady, Vic, and the leader of an opposing gang - but here they fight with their fists, not with easy disses with "slut" and "whore", and they fight for power, rather than men.

All in all, Girlhood is an electrifying look at female friendships and coming of age from a director who seems to relish the subject. From the blue-tinged cinematography (giving the film a cold but deeply powerful look, contrary to last year's Warmest Colour which the film will almost certainly be compared to) to the scene in which the girls, in shoplifted dresses, mime along to the entirety of Rihanna's "Diamonds", there is so much to look at, and to love, here. But better yet, Sciamma is able to touch an emotional chord - not just with the black women - or any women in the audience for that matter - who come to see it, but rather with everyone. The film encompasses many emotions - happiness, fear, love, hate - and it is impossible to not feel at least one of them whilst watching it.

Grace Barber-Plentie

4.5/5

LFF Review: Mommy

What makes Xavier Dolan a great director (as far as this first-time viewer can tell at least) is that he really doesn't give a shit. Shoot a film in a 1:1 aspect ratio? Eh, why not. Fill a soundtrack with the songs of yesteryear such as Oasis, Dido and Eiffel 65? Easy done. (Saying this, the film's montage set to Wonderwall really is one of the highlights of the year) Give the audience an extended wish-fulfillment sequence just to sage our worries about the film's protagonists, only to cut back to their bitter reality? Why the hell not. Canada's latest wunderkind (and official Cannes winner as of this year, thank you very much) Dolan takes our expectation of a simple story of a mother and son trying to survive and turns them into something that could easily become cringe inducing melodrama. Luckily, he seems to know exactly what he's doing.

The film opens with a dystopian message: the year is 2015 in a fictional Canada, and a new law has been introduced that allows parents to place their children in hospital straight away if they become an emotional or financial toll. This message is one of the few wrong turns that Dolan takes with the film, introducing Chekov's gun - or Chekov's law if you will - to hang over the whole of the film. We're then swiftly introduced to Anne Dorval's Die, a strong-willed, gloriously trashily dressed single mother who's been summoned to collect her son Steve from a detention centre. Die and Steve attempt to forge a new life together, but with Steve's ADHD and attachment issues plus money problems heavy on both mother and child's minds, it's not exactly easy.

Parent and child struggling against all odds is hardly new territory, (Although when was the last time we saw a really interesting mother and son dynamic in film? I'm struggling to think) hence Dolan's unorthodox tricks, which raise the story from dull melodrama to incredible filmmaking. What's important to note about Mommy is how much of it is actually cringe-inducing. The soundtrack is particularly ridiculous and nauseating, and there is a moment in which Steve skateboards towards the camera, gestures with his hands, and the screen widens from the 1:1 ratio to widescreen that could plausibly have been plucked straight from a Zac Braff film. Yet somehow Dolan is in the know about just how ridiculous to make it, using just the right amount of cringe, somewhat similarly to Pedro Almodovar's use of lush, camp cinematography.

Dolan also has another important tool in his pocket - the performances. Dorval, star of Dolan's debut I Killed My Mother is an absolute tour-de-force, eliciting the same charisma in a simple close-up of her face as she does in a furiously delivered monologue. As Steve, Antoine Olivier Pilon may not have the same level of maturity that Dorval does, but he more than makes up for this with his highly expressive face. The two together are an absolute dream team, playing the ups and downs of the duo with ease. Suzanne Clement also shines as Kyla, a shy neighbour who Die and Steve seemingly rescue from her dull suburban life and drag into their crazed world. In all honesty, there's barely a bad performance in the piece.

Of course every film as anticipated and lauded as Mommy has to have a few problems. An early scene in which Steve demonstrates his anger issues by firing an incredibly racist tirade of abuse at a black taxi driver goes to unnecessary extremes seemingly just to illustrate Steve's extensive vocabulary of swear words and quick temper. And, as previously mentioned, the law introduced at the film's opening seems a little too dystopian for a (fairly) straight drama. But overall, Mommy is an unabashed success, (as illustrated by Dolan's Cannes win back in May) yet another step in Dolan's apparent domination of cinema before he even turns 30.

Grace Barber-Plentie

4/5

LFF Review: Appropriate Behaviour

With the recent (and well overdue) influx of films and TV shows about women in New York making terrible life decisions, (Lena Dunham obviously leads this charge, with films like Frances Ha and Obvious Child and the gloriously stupid Broad City following behind) it can be easy to groan "really? another one" when another film about a woman in her 20s having life/relationship problems is announced. Luckily Appropriate Behavior, the feature debut of Iranian Desiree Akhavan manages to distinguish itself from the pack whilst also returning to the tropes of what is now becoming a very successful genre.

Akhavan's Shireen is first shown dumping all of the belongings that she kept in her ex-girlfriend's apartment in a dumpster - other than a giant silver strap-on that she bought for the afformented ex's birthday - and striding off (somewhat reluctantly) into her new life. Just like Greta Gerwig's Frances and Lena Dunham's Hannah, we meet Shireen at a moment where her life has utterly fallen apart, and oversee how she (attempts to) piece it back together. Shireen has multiple problems - she's newly single, she's bisexual but not "out" to her Iranian family, she needs a new place to live and a new job. And while she faces setbacks getting most of these goals, we're always confident in her ability to achieve them, and at the end of the film, in a very simple but very effective shot, we see that she's able to do this.

Every film about a woman in a mid-20s crisis needs a good leading lady, and Appropriate Behaviour more than has that in Akhavan. She's like a brilliant deadpan cross between Rosario Dawson, Aubrey Plaza and Greta Gerwig, choosing to express her problems with a pained look rather than a full-blown hissy fit like Dunham. What really works for Akhavan herself and her film is the way that she keeps her Iranian roots pride of place. While she moans about the incompatibility between her sexuality and her religion, it's clear that she is proud to be Iranian, and the reoccurring presence of Iranian New Year's Eve parties are a lovely touch considering how little we see Middle Eastern culture in American cinema, particularly in a comedy.

Another thing that works about Appropriate Behaviour is that, despite Desiree's multiple sexual experiments and blunders, (including a painfully awkward attempt at a threesome with a Brooklyn hipster couple) and the flashbacks that comprise her relationship with ex Maxine, it's not necessarily a film about romance. There's no romantic subplot thrown in just for the sake of it, which is something that you could argue about Obvious Child - instead, it's all about Shireen. She may spend a lot of the film pining over her ex girlfriend and attempting to win her back, but in the end she finds her own kind of closure, and seems content on her own.

Though it does follow closely to the storyline and tropes of the female led hipster comedies of late, Appropriate Behaviour is smart enough to distinguish itself from the pack with some smart observations of sex, love, hipsters and ethnicity. This is a film that was born to do well on the festival circuit, but I'm also more than certain that it can break through to the mainstream and find an audience that are just as happy to laugh at and root for Shireen as they are for Hannah or Frances.

Grace Barber-Plentie

3.5/5