REVIEW - GINGER & ROSA

Wandering through its narrative in a fittingly fanciful manner, like the tumultuous mind of Ginger, its troubled protagonist, Ginger & Rosa is like a collection of illusive vignettes, all inherently connected in reality, but representing conflicting (and conflict-inducing) concerns for Ginger. Her thoughts and worries are spilling out of her head; she is a superbly accurate embodiment of a typical teenage girl, her life already turned upside down by adolescence, she only wishes the rest of the world would go a bit easier on her. She's uptight and impenetrable, until it all becomes too much for her, and she relinquishes hold of her emotions and lets the rest of the world in, or until she makes some defiant, wayward choice to rebel. Sally Potter and Elle Fanning have such a clear and focused perception of Ginger that, as a character study, this is an excellent film. Potter's perception of the other people in Ginger's life, her mother, her father, Rosa, is equally strong, as is the response of the cast, lending the more dramatic scenes a feeling of authenticity and power, even if Potter is much too romantic to achieve a good grasp of the flow of colloquial dialogue, nor of how to present these scenes - emotions arise from nowhere, and disappear as quickly, cumbersome moments suspended awkwardly amidst more transitory ones. The climax is one such moment, and the assembling of all the major figures feels very Shakespearean, and not in a good way. But these people are so richly drawn, and the film so sumptuously designed (the DP is the ever-wonderful Robbie Ryan) that there is always something there to command your thoughts, and always something there to satisfy them.