Movie Review: "Ginger & Rosa"

"Ginger & Rosa": B.  The setting is a grim English city, 1962. The Brits' recollections of World War II are vivid as the Cold War is in full throttle. Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert) are seventeen years old and have been best friends since their teenage mothers gave birth to them in the same hospital days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The thought of nuclear armageddon is never far from the girls' minds. The Soviet Union is not that distant from their homeland. When the Cuban Missile Crisis rears its head and JFK warns the Russians via a worldwide radio broadcast to stay out of the Western Hemisphere, Ginger fears the worst. Rosa is also worried, but isn't as obsessed with it as her friend.

Neither of the girls lives in a standard "Ozzie and Harriet" type of family. Rosa's father is dead, and Ginger's parents' marriage is an unhappy one, caused by the dad, Roland (Alessandro Nivola), openly dating younger women. Both of the girls are sassy to their moms, even when family friends are present. In spite of the fact that Natalie, Ginger's mom (Christina Hendricks), is very deserving of Ginger's sympathy and appreciation, not to mention respect, Ginger identifies more with her dad. He is a pacifist who spent time in jail for being a conscientious objector, and his daughter is an activist. Ginger and Rosa attend meetings and march in parades to protest nuclear proliferation. Ginger, even though she is a smart girl, is not as savvy as her soulmate. When Roland drives by in his car with a cute female beside him, Rosa easily puts two and two together, figuring Roland for a tomcat, while Ginger pretends she did not see them. When her parents separate, it is Roland with whom Ginger wants to live. The simultaneous surprised and saddened look on Natalie's face when Ginger breaks the news to her is a memorable piece of acting by Hendricks. In the same short scene, Ginger yells at Natalie, "I don't want to turn out like you." The irony is that one of the main reasons for Natalie's situation is that she gave everything, including postponing a nascent career as a painter, to being a wife and mother.

Writer and director Sally Potter spends a hefty portion of the film establishing the closeness of the two title characters. They live in the same neighborhood and attend the same school. They pair up to hitch rides to the coast for solitude on the desolate beaches, they experiment with cigarettes, flirt with boys, and periodically reveal their innermost thoughts to each other in what appears to be an abandoned industrial lot. At times they even wear identical clothing, something one would ordinarily associate with much younger girls. You wonder if one of the pair is being set up for a fall. Isn't conflict a necessary ingredient of drama? Rosa appears to be in a hurry to grow up into womanhood. Ginger aspires to become a poet, but is in less of a hurry until circumstances dictate that she deal with trouble that a teenager shouldn't have to face.

As stated in a previous post, it is my policy to refrain from getting into too much detail for events which transpire in the last half or third of a movie, for fear of spoiling the outcome. The running time of Ginger & Rosa from the movie's start to the beginning of the closing credits is a mere eighty-four minutes. In a film of such short duration, the reviewing challenge in that regard is a tough one. So, I will trim my comments to the nub. When Ginger moves in with her father, she encounters a whole new set of problems which make her tiffs with Natalie pale by comparison. It is in these later scenes when the brilliance of the young actress Fanning is on display. She is hurt, betrayed, confused and overwhelmed. We know this not so much by the dialogue but from what our eyes are telling us.

The toughest nut to crack in all of this is Roland. When we first meet him we figure there is a good chance he is a cad. But it's the degree to which he is a cad that is too over-the-top for my tastes. Would a handsome, intelligent, relatively young guy really do what Roland does in the late stages of the story? If only I were able to be convinced that art reflects reality, the picture would have been more successful on my scorecard. Still, hats off to all the actors, especially Fanning and Hendricks, and to Potter for a worthy study of friendship and teenage life in England right before the dawning of the Beatles.