Gin­ger & Rosa

On the back of Orlan­do, her astound­ing, Jar­manesque debut film from 1992, Sal­ly Pot­ter has (right­ly) remained a key play­er in the pan­theon of mod­ern British art­house direc­tors, even though she has nev­er quite man­aged to eclipse the swirling, light­ly avant-garde genius of that ear­ly missive.

Her fol­low-up, 1995’s The Tan­go Les­son, was cer­tain­ly a bold and, at times, tran­scen­dent­ly beau­ti­ful side-shuf­fle, but was marred by its rough edges and less-than-stel­lar per­for­mances, not least from Pot­ter herself.

With her lat­est, Gin­ger & Rosa, all her strengths and weak­ness­es as a direc­tor are present and cor­rect. On the plus side, it’s a study of bur­geon­ing ide­ol­o­gy and sex­u­al­i­ty which refus­es to set­tle into a staid gener­ic tem­plate, com­pris­ing a series of short ellip­ti­cal episodes rather than a tired three-act sweep.

It’s also a film which locates a sat­is­fy­ing the­mat­ic uni­ver­sal­i­ty by zero­ing in on a very spe­cif­ic time and place: though the action takes place in the smoky out­skirts of Lon­don dur­ing the ear­ly ​’60s (pho­tographed mood­i­ly, if rather obvi­ous­ly by Rob­bie Ryan) and con­cerns a young girl’s grow­ing anx­i­ety at the pre­car­i­ous state of world affairs (specif­i­cal­ly, the threat of nuclear holo­caust dur­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis), it chan­nels cur­rent fears of nuclear anni­hi­la­tion and very real con­cerns about the future of the planet.

And yet it’s also a film which lacks any gen­uine dra­mat­ic heft and is con­stant­ly ham­pered by an ensem­ble of actors who all appear to be work­ing on very dif­fer­ent artis­tic plains. At its cen­tre is Gin­ger (Elle Fan­ning), the only child of dowdy, petit-bour­go­is house­wife Natal­ie (Christi­na Hen­dricks) and her absen­tee poet-war­rior father, Roland (Alessan­dro Nivola), a man of fly-boy good looks who was a con­sci­en­tious objec­tor dur­ing World War Two.

Ginger’s way­ward friend­ship with the emo-inclined latch-key sprite, Rosa (Alice Englert), takes up the ear­ly part of the film, and we are giv­en reg­u­la­tion scenes of teen rebel­lion in which the pair smoke cig­a­rettes, recite poet­ry and shrink-fit their blue­jeans in the bath.

But this cen­tral friend­ship, ini­tial­ly sug­ges­tive of some­thing like Peter Jackson’s Heav­en­ly Crea­tures, fades into the back­ground as Pot­ter choos­es to fol­low Ginger’s path into the CND move­ment and exam­ine the rea­sons behind her grad­ual estrange­ment from her friends and fam­i­ly and her gnaw­ing belief that she’s going to die young. The title of the film is mis­lead­ing, as Rosa becomes more of a bland plot insti­ga­tor than char­ac­ter in the sec­ond half of the film.

Fan­ning, so great in Sofia Coppola’s Some­where and JJ Abrams’ Super 8, here dis­pens­es with her appeal­ing apti­tude for loose, earnest­ly nat­u­ral­is­tic per­for­mance to deliv­er a very trad ​‘lead­ing lady’ turn that – with its ago­nised wails and actor­ly ges­tures – is robust, but dis­ap­point­ing­ly con­ven­tion­al. Hen­dricks is sad­ly mis­cast as Ginger’s long-suf­fer­ing moth­er, her forced Eng­lish accent is too notice­ably clipped and her nat­ur­al glam­our under­cuts the fact that she’s left to feel alone and inse­cure by Roland.

Potter’s aim, it appears, is to jux­ta­pose the threat of a loom­ing world dis­as­ter with dis­so­lu­tion of a polit­i­cal­ly and roman­ti­cal­ly frac­tured fam­i­ly, and she aims to depict how those night­mare sce­nar­ios might chip away at Ginger’s frag­ile sense of self. But the bold­ness of intent nev­er trans­lates into par­tic­u­lar­ly lucid or mov­ing cin­e­ma, and a cli­mac­tic scream­ing match (fol­lowed by oblig­a­tory kiss­ing and mak­ing up) not only comes as some­thing of a weak dénoue­ment, but seems to under­mine the film’s cau­tion­ary the­sis by stat­ing that ​‘it’ll all be alright in the end’.

Joe Dante explored sim­i­lar notions, albeit with a more male-ori­ent­ed bent, far more cogent­ly and enter­tain­ing­ly in his 1993 film, Matinée.