Girlhood [Bande de filles] *** (2014, Karidja Touré, Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh) – Movie Review

Writer-director Céline Sciamma‘s engrossing French coming-of-age epic tackles the thorny though much-examined issues of race, class and non-conformity, but in a fresh and furious way.

Karidja Touré (actually 20 at the time) is remarkable in her debut as 16-year-old Marieme, aka Vic, living in a harsh family setting in the Paris suburbs, a girl without prospects who joins a shoplifting gang of three free-spirited girls. Vic changes her name and her look, and quits school to get accepted in the gang.

She thus reinvents herself as a self confident adult, free of oppressive family, school and boys. But somehow she still isn’t fully liberated or entirely happy.

The fearless Sciamma films urgently and imaginatively, and her dialogue is as credible and telling as her characters and young actresses, who were scouted on the Paris streets.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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