About A Girl: A Review

In preparing for our short film we were shown various short films in class and asked to make our own analysis of them. As Tim Mcniven has already analyzed George Lucas's short film 'Freiheit" I shall then put across my critique of 'About a Girl".

The film opens with a shot of the protagonist a young working class girl from Manchester (you can tell her class from her accent, mannerisms and dowdy clothes) dancing in silhouette. With the setting being dark a sense of foreboding is created and even though the film has comical elements throughout there is still that underlying feeling of depression and that need to escape her world that is crumbling around her. Her need to escape is justified by the way she refers to her mother, as if she is the reason why her life is one of these everyday tragedies (and it usually is down to the parents).

This need to escape is also expressed through the song lyrics that are repeated throughout the film, "I've had enough", in essence they are no longer the simple song lyrics that are sung by the young deprived working class of Manchester, they become desperate cries of help and pleads asking to be 'saved' and wanting to escape the faust that they relate to as everyday life.

But in this the film is flawed. If you breakdown this film and look at how it is contructed right from its foundations you will realise that it is built upon stereotypes. We have a young working class lass from the north who happens to be working class. The setting blends between council estates, pubs, crappy football grounds and a canal which are all associated with the working class and above all are stereotypical! Even the characters that drive the plot, the mother who is broke and it's hinted that she gambles through a long shot of her holding a scratch card. The father is an unemployed and highly self centred induvidual and along with the daughter this creates yet another dysfunctional family, which we have seen in films over and over again. But this is what makes the film work.

Without these stereotypical and archetype characters we are given a narrative that cannot be brought forward in the time and space with highly sophisticated characters whose conscience is a swirling portal of trap doors and potholes and all the irrelevance that is needed to construct and take up the time of a feature film.