There’s no parallel between the American film “Boyhood” and the French film “Bande de Filles,” except that a clever marketer thought it would be useful to have “Girlhood” be the title for the latter movie.
Can’t blame them for that one, but “Girlhood” stands on its own as a thoughtful, non-judgmental look at a lost teen who finds definition over the course of a few rocky months. Her name is Marieme (Karidja Toure), a wary girl whose mother works nights as a janitor — the parental figure is barely seen in this youth-ruled scenario.
Marieme’s older brother is a bully, and she seems to have made herself as plain and anonymous as possible. One day at school (the story takes place in a housing development on the outskirts of Paris), she falls in with a trio of cool girls.
They are led by the glammed-up Lady (Assa Sylla), and their habits include shoplifting, taunting other groups of girls, and connecting over their shared sense of displacement. A lip-synching scene to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” shows their powerful bond better than 20 pages of dialogue could.
Writer-director Celine Sciamma is white, but she brings no outsider perspective to this clique of black teenagers; whatever kind of trouble they might get into, the movie stays right at that level, letting us understand how that stuff might happen with decent kids.
Most of the material falls into the category of closely-observed behavior, from Marieme’s tentative romance with a guy who’s friendly with her brother (he’s afraid of making a move because the brother could get rough with him) to the way Marieme tries to enact a motherly role toward her two younger sisters. The movie doesn’t spend a whole lot of time with the sisters, but it’s a tribute to Sciamma’s economical storytelling that you can see the writing on the wall for these children in desperate need of supervision.
Not everything in the movie works that well, but “Girlhood” is definitely better than the average coming-of-age tale. When Marieme truly begins to fall through the safety net, the film looks as though it’s going to take on epic proportions — but it doesn’t fulfill those ambitions.
At the core, though, is that persuasive portrait of how other people make a difference, and how these girls are brightened by their shared experience — like diamonds in the sky, as the song puts it.
“Girlhood” (three stars)
This study of teenage girls testing their boundaries in a poor suburb of Paris doesn’t quite reach its ambitions, but it has some strong observations and stays right at the non-judgmental level of its youthful protagonists. In French, with English subtitles.
Rating: Not rated; probably PG-13 for violence, subject matter
Showing: SIFF Uptown theater
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