Girlhood movie review & film summary (2015)
What Sciamma is interested in is "moments." There are many moments that linger in the mind long after the film has ended. The epic slo-mo all-female football game of the opening. An early scene showing a raucous group of girls heading back to the projects, all talking at once, until they fall into silence, collectively, when they approach a group of boys lounging on the steps. The repeat shots of the back of Marieme's head throughout, breaking "Girlhood" up into unofficial "chapters." Marieme washing dishes, emerging into the concrete yard outside, the camera following her, her head facing out. (Sciamma started "Tomboy" with the back of a head as well, a head with shorn-short hair, looking away, creating an automatic confusion as to whether it was a boy or a girl, the whole theme of the film.) In "Girlhood," there are fight scenes and a hilarious miniature-golf excursion, as well as many painful reminders that no, they will not be left alone, the world cannot leave the girls alone.
A masterpiece scene comes halfway through, so powerful in its representation of shared joy and freedom that it sets off echoes around it that continue throughout the rest of the film. The girls have shop-lifted pretty dresses, and booked a hotel room where they can hang out for the night, maybe go out to a club later in their stolen goods. There's a sense of exhilaration in the moment, and the four get up and start dancing together to Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” The light is a deep blue, and the girls are jumping and laughing and loving each other's awesomeness for almost the entirety of the song. All four are in the frame at the same time. Sciamma has given us what feels like a real event, a real moment, one of those precious moments in time that the girls might look back on and think, "That. That was good."
The final section of "Girlhood" doesn't quite have the energy of the rest of it, although Karidja Touré is such a compelling presence, and Marieme is such a watchable character, that her experiences create a tension all their own. What will become of Marieme? The group friendship is formative, powerful, for all of them, it is something they treasure and cling to, but they're also just teenage girls. They're not sure yet what is going to be the most important thing in their lives.
Comparisons will be made, inevitably, to Richard Linklater's "Boyhood," merely because of the title. They are two very different films. Sciamma's films could all go under the title "Girlhood." Her films do not diagnose. They don't worry (at least not overtly). They do not assume that "girlhood" is mostly an experience of inevitable derailment. Adolescence is a time of growth and change, of trying on new identities, seeing which one fits the best. Girls "come of age" just like boys do, but many films take the attitude that it's more dangerous for girls to experiment. That might be partially true, because of pregnancy, but it is not entirely true. "We Are the Best!" was a terrific antidote to that prevalent teenage-girls-in-peril narrative, and so is "Girlhood." It's not that Sciamma sugar-coats the dangers that are out there. It is that she is more interested in how girls figure things out than in the many ways girls can go wrong.
