Girlhood - film review

Art - this is the reason we need it - bothers about people it's too easy not to bother about. The poor; the lost; the malfunctioning. Before Celine Sciamma's superb Girlhood(Bande de filles) my life seemed complete without knowing about rootless girls from immigrant families groping for fulfilment in the Paris suburbs. Now, though, it seems completer.

Sixteen-year-old Marieme is plain but beautiful. Her dimly glowing sullenness pulses with filaments of hope. Swapping lifestyles like hairstyles - joining a girl gang, trying out petty crime, trading an abusive brother for a docile boyfriend, riffing dance steps to a Rihanna song in an ad-libbed sisterly ensemble on the steps of La Defence - she is played with chameleon charisma by Karidja Toure (a non-professional like most of Sciamma's cast). Lit like a dream by cinematographer Crystal Fournier, this fresco of haves and have-nots puts us inside a ghetto society and challenges us to share the lives and yearnings of those who want to find a way out.

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