I love it when movies do this, when the director takes time out and has a character listen to a song in its entirety. At one point in writer-director Céline Sciamma’s (Water Lillies, Tomboy) Girlhood, in a nothing bedroom scene, a girl puts on Rihanna’s Diamonds. She starts to dance. She’s joined by a friend, then another. A fourth watches from the bed, just enjoying seeing her three best buddies enjoy themselves. The whole four minutes is used too. I’m no fan of Rihanna or the song but everything just clicks for one perfect moment. Music, when used right, can say so much more than action or dialogue.
But this is no standout moment – Sciamma dots Girlhood with terrific scenes like this. The opening sequence has teenager Marieme (Karidja Touré) and friends return from football practice to their rundown estate; giddy and nattering, there’s a distinct change in tone as they approach boys who loom out of the shadows. The conversation stops. As they split up to go to their various blocks, Marieme is left alone to navigate the dangerous alleys. What a spine- tingling scene.
At home, with her mother at work, she does what she can to protect her younger sisters from her bully of a brother. Refused graduation to high school because of bad grades, Marieme falls in with some bad girls, headed up by the feisty Lady (Sylla), and embarks on crusade of bullying, theft, and drugs.
But Marieme feels a sense of place with her new friends. Being a girl, black, from a rough neighbourhood, and into things girls aren’t supposed to (she plays American football, likes Fifa on the PS), it’s only in this tight friendship that she finally experiences what it’s like to be who she wants to be. Along the way Sciamma burrows under the skin of her heroine, showing what it can be to be a girl - the everyday fear and casual threats they experience; one scene sees a boy gets aggressive when a girl doesn’t say thanks when he says she’s pretty. It’s wonderful at times with Karidja Touré in a star-making turn.
Girlhood doesn’t have it all its own way, however. The gang, with their jackets and flick- knives, are a bit Rebel Without A Cause - You’re a square, daddio! – and for the last half hour the story falls off a cliff, rummaging about for a suitable ending and failing to find one.
But when it’s good Girlhood is beautiful. Like diamonds in the sky.
