Where to start with this film?
This film was written by the prodigy that is Caitlin Moran, not a prodigy like Freddie Mercury but a literary prodigy. A person whose words make any situation feel like it could happen at home and you're experiencing it with them.
Set in the harsh post-Thatcherist Wolverhampton city of North England you see a teenage whose words flow from her like a running tap. The main character played by the American actress Beanie Feldstein is a vibrant northerner in the 90s seeking an outlet and finding it in the intoxicating of watching and reviewing bands. With a vibrant red hairstyle, a cabaret-style outfit and her pen and notepad Beanie steal the screen with a character that I would have loved to be friends with at school. To be a product of that circumstance but finding some starlight to raise herself up, we need all of this.
The songs sung by Alfie Allen adds to the tone brought by the early 1990s and 1980s music scene and with musical cameos from the Manic Street Preachers you may watch the film waiting for an instruction manual on how to fit in but you leave with an added emotion and vague instructions (as if they were in in french but the pictures can help you anyway).
Despite the book of which the film is based was released six years ago we can't but hope that Caitlin Moran has enough words to encapsulate similar characters as I feel I am not alone in saying these "real" characters allow similarities for the average person and this is what movies should be showing.
Not the pristine white, blonde and skinny girl who has it hard because she is dating the wrong hot person.
We need stories about the working class, the non- average body size, the non-white person.
So I invite movie and tv companies to find books that exhibit stories of people whom need stories to be told and make them into films. They don't have to be titanic sized blockbusters but as you have the money to promote important messages in the unsure times use it wisely.
This all leads me to give one recommendation:
For any girl, any feminist, any person who is currently finding out who they are, take note because the moral of finding yourself is expressed clearly at the epilogue of this movie. Make errors and learn from mistakes, or just carry make them and wear them on the brim of your awesome hat because in the end all of these things build yourself.
As a twenty-something student, I am still trying to figure themself out and I wish this book had been known to me when I was younger as it may have helped me accept myself. I write this while listening to Lady Gaga's "Born this way" and can't help feel this sums up the movie, it doesn't fit the culture or the time of the film, however, it sums up the fight for people who don't have the privilege as the film said. Yet, as we live only our one life we shouldn't waste that privilege with not living our moments to the extent. Though maybe not the extent lived by the alter ego of the main character, Dolly Wilde.
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