Ginger & Rosa (***1/4)

The more I see films about teens, the more I think they can be divided into films with age-appropriate leads, usually independent films about artistic types, and films in which actors in their 20s play the teens, which are usually more mainstream. But this must be one of very few in which the actor playing the lead is actually younger, by years, than her character. That would be the remarkable Elle Fanning, who just a few years ago memorably played a little girl in Phoebe in Wonderland, and who had a breakout role in 2011’s Super 8. Here she is ginger-haired Ginger, born when the Hiroshima bomb was dropped (as the opening shot lets us know), and now, with the Cuban Missile Crisis looming, worried that others will destroy western civilization, including her home in England. She’s an aspiring poet whose wheelhouse includes deep thinkers Simone de Bouvoir and Bertrand Russell. She plays 45s by the likes of Dave Brubeck on her little record player, with the tics and pops rendered authentically on the soundtrack.
 
Ginger and Rosa are the sort of friends who are so close they can only grow apart. (Rosa is more interested in boys than politics.) Writer-director Sally Potter establishes this with low-lit shots of carefree times that seem inspired by the French New Wave. If this were 1967, these young women might be getting high and listening to psychedelic music, but Potter has chosen to set her story five years earlier, centering the story around a small group of intellectual types (viewers may recognize Annette Bening and Timothy Spall in small roles), of which her estranged parents (Alessandro Nivola, Christina Hendricks) are a part, rather than a larger countercultural movement. Not that the film is especially heady; if anything, it’s about how intellectual pursuits don’t negate earthly desire, or disappointment. And it’s about Ginger’s relationship with a mother she does not respect and a father she idealizes. Potter is known for arty films such as Orlando and The Tango Lesson, but this one is a straightforward narrative that should satisfy those who like sensitive coming-of-age stories. It also announce Fanning as a real talent. She shows the ability to cry on cue and do an English accent, but it’s in a scene where she reacts to learning that her father is an imperfect idol that you can really see her skill — there is heartbreak written all over her face.

IMDb link

viewed 3/14/13 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/15–25/13