Ginger & Rosa

Last night I was so happy to find Ginger & Rosa. I was looking for a drama that takes place in the 1960s, a time that I sometimes like to relive. Well, I selected a terrific movie that I enjoyed because of the story, acting, and the excellent music from the 60s the was threaded through the movie. Ginger & Rosa stars Elle Fanning, Alice Englert, and Oliver Platt.

Ginger & Rosa is film about growing up in London in the turbulent early 60's. The director, Sally Potter, gets just about everything right. You can smell, feel and touch England in the 60's. The characterisation is excellent, from the self-indulgent and irresponsible adults who provide poor role models to the young girls who collectively endure a myriad of emotions and motivations as they engage with a changing and insecure world.

Elle Fanning plays Ginger, a 17-year-old, who is still inseparable from Rosa (Englert), her best friend since birth. They do everything together, from shrinking their blue jeans in the bathtub and ironing their hair to experimenting with cigarettes and the occasional kiss from a boy; they even dress alike for their first meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an obsession of Ginger, who has grown up in the shadow of atomic annihilation.

Ginger is encouraged in her tentative activism by her father, Roland (Alessandro Nivola), a pacifist professor, as well as her godfathers, a gay couple played by Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt. Her mother, Natalie (Christina Hendricks), is more wary, especially when it comes to Rosa, whom she suspects of being troubled. And indeed, as Ginger & Rosa unfolds, the girls face a series of ruptures, the first having to do with Ginger’s embrace of politics while Rosa drifts toward the church.

That is all I will say because I do not want to give away too much of the excellent drama. I highly recommend this film.