Ginger And Rosa

Ginger And Rosa

Teenage Revolution…

Growing up is never easy.  Anyone who tells you that your teenage years are the best of your life has probably never had their head flushed down a loo or spent 4 days straight in their bedroom listening to The Smiths and Tori Amos.  Pity poor Ginger (Elle Fanning) then who instead must contend with the threat of impending nuclear devastation and her imploding family life in director Sally Potter’s new film Ginger And Rosa.

It’s London, 1962, and 17-year-olds Ginger and Rosa (Alice Englert) have been best friends since the womb having been born on the same day, the day the atom bomb destroyed Hiroshima, ushering in the nuclear age and effectively ending the Second World War.  The pair are inseparable; playing truant, hitchhiking, shrinking their jeans together, smoking, mooning after boys.  But slowly they find their friendship tested by the different paths they are on. 

The child of outspoken, left-wing academic, the adulterous Roland (Allesandro Nivola) and frustrated artist Natalie (Christina Hendricks), the sweet, sensitive, poetry-writing Ginger is obsessed and terrified by the threat of nuclear holocaust.  Encouraged by her gay godfathers Marks One and Two (Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt) and their poet friend Bella (Annette Bening), Ginger joins CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), becoming a committed activist.  Rosa’s concerns however are less worldly.  Religious and a hopeless romantic, she’s determined not to end up abandoned with kids like her single mother.  Rosa becomes increasingly infatuated by the atheist Roland and they begin an affair, driving a wedge between the two friends.  With the Cuban Missile Crisis threatening to spiral out of control and the world on the brink of Armageddon, events come to a head as Ginger’s life goes into meltdown.  

A fairly traditional tale of intellectual and emotional coming of age set against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Sexual Revolution, Ginger And Rosa is perhaps the most mainstream film of Sally Potter’s career and certainly her most accessible since 1992’s Orlando.  There’s nothing original about the film, it’s pretty obvious and by-the-numbers, hitting all the beats you’d expect, ticking off plot points like a checklist, a nice middle-class tale of nice middle-class girls growing up.  But what sets it apart is its sense of place and time, its fantastic performances and its warmth.

The world Ginger and Rosa inhabit is one that still bears the scars of the Second World War and its aftermath.  It’s a Britain that is stumbling into the light after the dark years of war, rationing and hardship, where the Pill has kicked off the Sexual Revolution, forever changing the role of women in society, where rock and roll is giving birth to teenage culture and where the spectre of nuclear war cast a dark shadow.  But Potter shoots the film through a prism of her own wistful nostalgia.  Born in 1949, Potter herself was hitting her teenage years around the same time as Ginger and Rosa and the film is bathed in the golden sentiment of memory.  Ginger may be overly earnest in her political and intellectual engagement but she’s plagued by the same concerns and worries of any teenager trying to find her way in society, negotiating the tricky waters of adulthood.  Her parents are a mess, her father a posturing leftie justifying his selfishness through rhetoric, her mother neurotic and emotionally abused, Ginger the rope in an emotional tug of war.

The performances are fantastic.  As her parents, Allessandro Nivola and Christina Hendricks give understated, subtle turns, both mastering the British accent while Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt and Annette Bening are great as Ginger’s intellectual and emotional support network, Bening in particular splendid in the final third of the film when her lofty New York Jewish intellectual finally unleashes some righteous fury during the film’s emotional showdown, her Bella the impossible to ignore voice of sense.  Englert is excellent as Rosa, a vulnerable teenager taking control of her own sexuality, sympathetic while not always likeable.  Fanning just gets better with every film.  Just 13 when she shot Ginger And Rosa, her performance is mature and wise, achingly heartfelt, a naïve, self-righteous girl clinging to her principles as her world crumbles.

Beautifully shot and acted, Ginger And Rosa is a pleasingly sentimental, naturalistic portrait of female teen friendship set against the turmoil of the early ‘60s.      

David Watson

Directed by:

Sally Potter

Produced by:

Andrew Litvin and Christopher Sheppard

Starring:

Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks, Alessandro Nivola, Annette Bening, Jodhi May, Alice Englert, Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt

Genre:

Drama

Language:

English

Runtime:

1 hour 29 minutes

Certificate:

12a

Rating:

4/5

UK Release Date:

Friday 19^th October