Glasgow Film Festival 2015: Girlhood

The inaccurate English retitling of Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles has led some to draw comparisons with Boyhood, but where Richard Linklater’s film was a generalised account of growing up, Girlhood is much more complex and specific in its exploration of race, gender and class. All of Sciamma’s films has concerned young women struggling to find their identity, and Girlhood focuses on a black teenager from the Parisian suburbs who reinvents herself and finds both friendship and trouble when she is inducted into a girl gang.

This may be a less perfectly formed picture than Sciamma’s Tomboy but it’s also a more ambitious one, and the director’s most visually accomplished work to date, with sharp images and a potent use of colour throughout. But the film’s biggest strength lies in Sciamma’s magic touch with young actresses: the cast of first-timers give uniformly excellent performances, with Karidja Touré and Assa Sylla in particular showing a real star quality. [PC]