About A Girl- How does the director make an impact on the audience through the character of Girl?

About a Girl uses the character of girl to show us innocence and to flip that in the ending, making it a lot more sinister and disturbing. The film opens on a wide shot of Girl singing and dancing to the song "Stronger" by Britney Spears. She appears happy and content while singing such an empowering song despite being on her own and in such a grey, bleak atmosphere, as achieved by a naturalistic look. This gives us the impression that she is carefree despite her surroundings. Throughout the first half of the film, this is reinforced, as she describes her poor and neglectful relationship with her parents while still laughing. This is taken into a different context however, when we see the ending this can be taken into a different context, as rather than showing her innocence in a poor situation we know she was laughing while knowing her intention of dumping the baby in the river, which makes the entire film much more disturbing. This is also made more disturbing by the fact she is talking to the audience, as well as a shaky camera and a lack of stylistic features giving the film a documentary tone to it.


The director also uses the character of Girl to comment on class differences within society. The experiences that she recounts are very common among working class people, this ranges from somewhat funny in a way that is self-deprecating and relatable to people in similar financial situations to much darker, tackling more serious societal issues such as addiction and neglect. Throughout the entirety of the film she was wearing an oversized coat, which during the film we assume is as a result of her not being able to afford clothes that fit her, however it is later revealed at the end of the film that she was carrying a dead baby as she dumps it into a river. It can be assumed that she had an abortion and is covering the bump with the coat as she says "I'm getting better at hiding things" before she dumps the baby. The social commentary is also made more poignant  by the documentary feeling within the film.

Comments

  1. Coulsdon Media and Film18 November 2020 at 06:24

    A good start, with a strong commentary on the social message of the film. Well done!

    Please review and improve by:

    -Making sure each paragraph is focussed one ONE key point or arugment. State what that argument is in the first sentence of the paragraph

    -Describing more elements of mise-en-scene and audiovisual components.

    Julian

    ReplyDelete

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