rogerdarlington In 2014, two films with similar titles were released: "Boyhood" and "Girlhood". But they were very different. The first was an American movie, shot over 12 years, with an all- white cast. The second was a French work with a narrative of a few months and a cast almost wholly black. "Girlhood" - which was called "Bande De Filles" in the original French - tells the story of 16 year old Marieme (a remarkable showing by young Karidja Touré) who joins a gang of three other girls in an effort to find some status, only to discover that this is not the life she seeks. Like "Boyhood", there is no real resolution but simply a coming of age. Céline Sciamma - herself white - both wrote and directed this original view of what it means to be young, uneducated and black in France.

pendenquejohn Very interesting movie that proposes a "soft" perspective on the downfall of Karidja Touré in the spiral of delinquency and social exclusion. I think it touched most of the elements that trigger such an attitude and certainly the main one being the quest for having a better life in combination to the indifference of parents overcompensated by an excessively violent brother trying to play the role of a father and a mother.The rejection of school and the lack of solution for children in situation of family and educational failure is also well presented.I'm not so sure why it was made easy for her to enter a group of girls but the fact that they become her second family with their specific codes (which is no codes) is actually well illustrated. I think the perspective of the director was to propose a softer version of what reality truly is, however, it does not take away from the brutality of certain scenes which does bring the spectator to react and question the choices of Karidja Touré.I did expect her situation to degrade very profoundly but the film stayed on the its staying soft while showing the reality of things.Certain characters did seem a little bit caricatural at times to my feeling and was often quite an understatement to the brutality that really exists within "gangs" in general (though I'm fully aware that this clique of girls were not really a gang -; hence the absence of the true codes that drive these kinds of criminal organizations). Some of the girls did get a little "photoshopping" especially Karidja Touré.The quality of the image is quite good and the movie stays really dynamic. The reinforcement of the absence of any parental authority is well done. Indeed, the mother is extremely absent in the majority of the scenes and even if she would be, she has very little to say to her oldest daughter and daughters in general.The story holds until the end and the development of the Touré character is well conducted.

rebeca andrei Marianne is 16 and her teacher, let's call her the sad result of a privileged white community tells her that she is not going to be admitted to high school. She replaces the role of an absent single mother who works incessantly as a cleaner to support her family. When there is no place where she can feel protected, she gets "adopted" by a girl's band. The morality of her life changes. There is another set of rules by which she plays now. She doesn't question them yet. It's not the new clothes and make up that make her stay, not the coolness, but the "belonging" feeling. Underneath all the decadence that we notice, there is love. One that they are probably still learning how to show. Marianne gets through a series of metamorphosis. Strength in her neighbourhood is gained by immoral devices but we are watching a world that creates its own set of rules. The camera does not approve of them nor does it judge them. It merely observes them maybe with a bit of compassion. At the end we no longer see a girl but a woman. One that can take her own decisions, without allowing exterior forces to change her trajectory. She can now accept her own vulnerability yet be stronger.

Red_Identity It's easy to dismiss so much of this film as a gimmick on first-look. I mean, Girlhood... it just seems like such an obvious set-up for one of the most acclaimed films of this century. The good thing is that this film really isn't trying to follow the same structure as Boyhood. Whereas that film really embraced itself in realism, one can say that this one is trying to play with more conventional structures in terms of a 'coming of age" drama. One can say that the main character goes through more changes here, in ways that are more measurable. Perhaps in that way this film may not be as realistic, but perhaps in other ways it's more able to find something captivating in its quiet moments.