feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2012-11-11 06:28 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2012-11-11 06:28 pm
REVIEW: Ginger and Rosa (2012)
Ginger and Rosa 12A
Written and directed by: Sally Potter
Starring: Elle Fanning, Alice Englert, Alessandro Nivola, Christina Hendricks etc.
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt2115295/
This is a coming-of-age story, of sorts, set against the backdrop of the 1960s anxieties about nuclear bombs, with the Cuban missile crisis happens just as the friendship of the titular characters comes under pressure. We can see the growing tensions between the best friends since their mothers’ labour from their opening scenes. Ginger (Fanning) and Rosa (Englert) do almost everything together, down to wearing the same clothes – the depiction of friendship is completely authentic - but are starting to get pulled in different directions. Rosa is the more sophisticated, and certainly the more precocious sexually. Ginger is increasingly obsessed by the idea of total nuclear destruction, an obsession that only grows as the news gets bleaker, influenced by a charismatic speaker at the meetings she attends, which lead to protests, at the same time as her bohemian parents Nat (Hendricks) and Roland (Nivola) split up again. Only this time it isn’t over one of his students. Roland, educated enough to argue vehemently, polysyllabically for his right to behave utterly selfishly, has noticed that his daughter’s best friend has (or appears to have) crossed over the invisible line between being a girl and being a woman. It’s a line Ginger isn’t quite as ready to cross. But because of her love for both her father and Rosa, she becomes implicated, knowing about their relationship, but not equipped to walk away from a completely unsuitable situation.
It’s a good film with a good cast. Fanning (The Nines, Super 8 and We Bought a Zoo) is developing into something special, Englert is well cast as the sultrier, damaged and still vulnerable Rosa. Nivola is excellent as charismatic Roland, a character who is sorry enough for himself that I was quite free to cordially despise him for taking advantage of the ever younger females willing to pander to him. The cast also features Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt and Annette Benning as friends of the family who encourage Ginger’s activist leanings, but try to look after her. However, quite a few of them are Americans pretending to be English, and I can’t say I thought Fanning and Hendricks nailed their accents all the time. The film sometimes felt unmoored. I suppose I’m used to period drams that fetishise getting the detail right, and it’s almost like a game for the audience to pick up on anachronisms. I suppose this film is trying to be more expressionistic, but while some crowd scenes – the protest that the police ‘attended’, the visit to the pub and the chemistry lesson - felt real, others really didn’t (maybe because of a lack of budget). There’s a decided look to this film, and it mostly works, it’s very good visual storytelling. The film makes many other films seem cluttered with dialogue (although the intervention scene towards the end, where the adults confront Ginger to try to get her to open up, needed better handling).
It reminded me of Me Without You, with its focus on the intensity of friendship between girls and the moment it’s challenged by sex and growing apart (and the feeling that the film-maker was looking back in nostalgia) and An Education (certainly Rosa and Roland’s relationship). But it’s also its own, personal story. Striking images will stay with me, I think.
Written and directed by: Sally Potter
Starring: Elle Fanning, Alice Englert, Alessandro Nivola, Christina Hendricks etc.
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt2115295/
This is a coming-of-age story, of sorts, set against the backdrop of the 1960s anxieties about nuclear bombs, with the Cuban missile crisis happens just as the friendship of the titular characters comes under pressure. We can see the growing tensions between the best friends since their mothers’ labour from their opening scenes. Ginger (Fanning) and Rosa (Englert) do almost everything together, down to wearing the same clothes – the depiction of friendship is completely authentic - but are starting to get pulled in different directions. Rosa is the more sophisticated, and certainly the more precocious sexually. Ginger is increasingly obsessed by the idea of total nuclear destruction, an obsession that only grows as the news gets bleaker, influenced by a charismatic speaker at the meetings she attends, which lead to protests, at the same time as her bohemian parents Nat (Hendricks) and Roland (Nivola) split up again. Only this time it isn’t over one of his students. Roland, educated enough to argue vehemently, polysyllabically for his right to behave utterly selfishly, has noticed that his daughter’s best friend has (or appears to have) crossed over the invisible line between being a girl and being a woman. It’s a line Ginger isn’t quite as ready to cross. But because of her love for both her father and Rosa, she becomes implicated, knowing about their relationship, but not equipped to walk away from a completely unsuitable situation.
It’s a good film with a good cast. Fanning (The Nines, Super 8 and We Bought a Zoo) is developing into something special, Englert is well cast as the sultrier, damaged and still vulnerable Rosa. Nivola is excellent as charismatic Roland, a character who is sorry enough for himself that I was quite free to cordially despise him for taking advantage of the ever younger females willing to pander to him. The cast also features Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt and Annette Benning as friends of the family who encourage Ginger’s activist leanings, but try to look after her. However, quite a few of them are Americans pretending to be English, and I can’t say I thought Fanning and Hendricks nailed their accents all the time. The film sometimes felt unmoored. I suppose I’m used to period drams that fetishise getting the detail right, and it’s almost like a game for the audience to pick up on anachronisms. I suppose this film is trying to be more expressionistic, but while some crowd scenes – the protest that the police ‘attended’, the visit to the pub and the chemistry lesson - felt real, others really didn’t (maybe because of a lack of budget). There’s a decided look to this film, and it mostly works, it’s very good visual storytelling. The film makes many other films seem cluttered with dialogue (although the intervention scene towards the end, where the adults confront Ginger to try to get her to open up, needed better handling).
It reminded me of Me Without You, with its focus on the intensity of friendship between girls and the moment it’s challenged by sex and growing apart (and the feeling that the film-maker was looking back in nostalgia) and An Education (certainly Rosa and Roland’s relationship). But it’s also its own, personal story. Striking images will stay with me, I think.