About A Girl
Brian Percival’s 2001 short film About A Girl.
About A Girl (Brian Percival, 2001) focuses on a nameless 13 year old girl living in a working class area of Manchester. She narrates the film to the audience as she walks along talking about her life, where it cross cuts to sequences that describe what she is taking about, for example we see her and her friends singing while she narrates the action. At the end, the girl admits that she has become very good at hiding things from her mum, which is followed by her discarding a newborn baby in a plastic bag into a river, suggesting that she has suffered a miscarriage.
Narrative Structure:
The film begins with a girl dancing in a field, which is very striking because of her dark silhouette against the contrasting bright sky. The story follows the girl narrating her life with cross-cuts that show what she is narrating to us, for example, her relationship with her father. Each of her stories get progressively more and more uncomfortable and serious, as topics like domestic violence and poverty are discussed. It ends with her disposing a baby in a plastic bag into the canal beside her, which creates a sudden severity of the story, as the other negative aspects of her life are not serious to her, however even she realises the severity of her miscarriage. This almost creates the sense of a twist in the narrative, as the whole film is quite slow until that moment and viewers are left with the thought of what this young girl has been through. As the film jumps between narrated and non-narrated moments, it is unclear to establish if it is linear or not, which was done intentionally to show that her life is all-consuming and has lost any structure.
Cinematic Influences:
Regarding the context of About A Girl, Manchester in 2001 was a time of extreme violence, as this was the time of the Oldham riots. In addition, Britain was a place of poverty, especially Manchester, and the treatment of the working class was having an affect on children and their upbringing. There was a lot of neglect and domestic abuse faced by young people, which this film focuses on heavily. This is very different from other films at the time because heavy topics like child abuse were not discussed, which makes About A Girl a very important film within cinema history, as it influenced more films that raise awareness of working class children. Socially, these working class people were very common within Britain, which is why the film is titled About A Girl, as this nameless girl represents millions of girls all over Britain, as the word A suggests that there are many people in similar situations, as the film is not About The Girl.
I would say that the film’s genre is a drama because the story is told through the girl’s narration and the dramatic topics that feature within the film. It follows the conventions of a drama because extreme and real-life scenarios are discussed.
The cinematography within About A Girl is memorable because when she is narrating to the audience, the camera is hand-held because it is quite shaky, which puts us in the perspective of one of her friends, but the rest of the film is shot possibly using a steadicam. There are some interesting shots, for example the two-shot of the girl and her father, both on opposite ends of the frame to show their distant relationship.
Mise-en-scène is important within this film because it is shot on location to show the reality of the girl’s situation, and audiences can see the poverty of Manchester through the buildings and cheap clothing. Everything that is seen on screen is incredibly naturalistic to show how real her life is.
Sound is used efficiently because it is all diegetic to make viewers feel like we are there with the girl, which makes us sympathise for her. This is achieved through the sound of traffic, dogs barking, music and singing.
The editing is memorable because it constantly cuts to another thought that the girl has to show her chaotic mindset, and it shows us what she narrates as well, for example her dad leaving her outside of the pub. This is effective because we are physically shown the difficulties of her life, which makes us feel bad for her.
Finally, performance is effective because Ashley Thewlis’s (the girl) accent informs viewers where she is from and fits to the stereotypes of young people living in Manchester. We get the impression that she is trying to act older than she is from the way that she presents herself through her gestures and grumpy facial expressions.
Creating Meaning and Effect:
The main group being represented in this film are young girls in Britain, especially working class girls who have grown up in poverty, as the film focuses on how this has affected their childhood. I feel as though the dominant purpose of this film was to raise awareness about the lives of impoverished children in Britain and the dangers that they face. The film’s aesthetic is quite dull to reflect the dullness of life in Manchester, as the colour scheme is bland and the pace is slow due to the lack of music. This aesthetic propels the narrative forward because it allows viewers to understand the severity of this girl’s life, and allows us to focus on what she is saying.
Overall, I found About A Girl to be quite boring, as it was quite slow and because the girl was speaking about her life very calmly, it felt unserious. Due to the fairly bland mise-en-scène and lack of sound, I was not captivated by the look or feel of the film. However, the end took a very serious turn which allowed me to reflect and think further on the film and the messages raised. I did not find any moments within this film very inspirational for my own film, but it was still an important short film due to the issues raised.
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