Bande De Filles (Girlhood) (2014)

A French film? Why would I watch a French film? Has it got subtitles? I can’t stand subtitles. These are the responses I received when asking my friends to watch this film with me.

If you are also sat wondering why you should watch this mesmerising French film, stay with this review.

Pre-Moonlight’s (Barry Jenkins) momentous Oscar win in 2017, a small film called Bande de Filles (Céline Sciamma) was released, that actually shaped Barry Jenkins view on how to shoot Moonlight. Bande de Filles follows Marieme who after being told not to continue on with school joins an all-female gang, with some persuasion from the look of the boys, what was once a quiet, shy girl is quickly turned inside out and finds her place in the gang. The viewer is quickly drawn into Marieme’s life and the twists and turns that come with growing up in the projects of Paris, from the daily fights to caring for her younger sisters, you can’t help but become attached and desperate to see where her choices lead next. After meeting an older man who promises a better life, better job prospects and protection, she realises this life isn’t for her and takes life into her own hands.

We were first introduced with the Paris housing projects back when La Haine was released, 25 years ago, but don’t think that this is the film you are watching, Sciamma builds on the basis of what we are used to when watching a film set in the projects and breaks it down. She takes the actors and splits them open so we can see inside each individual process of development and the work that each character has done to get there. You could compare it to the British Film “Kidulthood”, which focuses on the lives of teenagers in Ladbrook Grove but in the gritty way that is seen in Bande de Filles, both are not afraid to show you the dark truths that occur and have the sense that coming of age films aren’t all pretty pictures and don’t have an ending where everything works out ok.

A love of cinema is what you can get from Girlhood, defying normal conventions to get meanings across to the viewer, where it gets to points of the film you don’t know which way it’s going to go. She portrays messages physically, due to the fact she knew there would be a constraint with language, the film opens at an all-girls American football game, which is typically a male sport, in which they are seeing bashing and knocking each other down this is quickly contrasted with them hugging and high fiving, almost foreshadowing to the audience that the girls have a dark side, and when they want to be they can be the more powerful ones. Which we later see at one of the fights, none of which take place with the males in the story, they are always only the females, which contrasts society’s view on what people expect, showing that women have got the power and the drive to make things happen on their own accord. In the middle of the film the girl gang are in a hotel room, Rhianna’s diamond is playing and the lighting is blue. When the words start Lady (Assa Sylla) looks direct into the camera, directly at the audience, as if it’s a call for help, that she is a diamond just looking for a way out of this rock that she had been placed in from birth. The same goes for all the girls in the room, that they too are looking for a way out of the projects.

What is very interesting about this film is the casting, again varying from normal conventions they didn’t cast from local stage schools but from train stations and streets, which helps to give it his street feel, that it isn’t a shiny screen it truly is real life, these characters aren’t characters they are real people. This is why Karidja Touré (Marieme) perfectly embodies the messages the film is trying to push across, the real embodiment of being on the cusp of becoming an adult, as the story changes she changes with it. Sciamma herself grew up in the suburbs and this is the reason as to why she had based all her films in the suburbs, she believes that if you make fiction this is the place for it, and for coming of age stories and after watching Bande de Filles you can see why.

Bande de Filles is a film not made to be about gang culture, but the deep-rooted meaning is friendship between girls and how these ties break as we grow up and become our own people. A film with a story so rare and a character so rarely seen is what pushes this film to what it is. I couldn’t help but think about how if Marieme was a boy how different the story would have been and how we wouldn’t see the empowerment within Marieme to make her way, and this is why the film is incredible. I believe that cinema is a view into different worlds and different stories and that’s why foreign films are as much needed in today’s society as superhero films. The only way we can overcome prejudice is to see into their world and see their stories and know where they come from. I give this film five stars for this reason, it not only shows the story of Marieme but the story of people who try to improve their life one way at a time and either succeed or fail.