Ginger and Rosa (2012)

From independent film director Sally Potter comes this small tale about friendship in the early 1960s as the world is heading towards the Cuban missile crisis. Ginger & Rosa is about two teenage girls growing up together. Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert), are 17 years old both on the verge of entering adulthood but having fun together, discussing religion, politics, playing truant and jumping in cars with boys.

Ginger though is facing a personal crisis. Her parents have separated, her bohemian and free thinking father might be a womanizer and the dangers in the world is causing her to be filled with dread. Ginger gets involved with the nuclear disarmament movement and her relationship with Rosa enters an upheaval that threatens to shatter both families.

The film starts interestingly enough especially with the casting which for a tale set in Britain has rather a lot of American actors such as Oliver Platt, Annette Bening, Christina Hendricks and Fanning who is excellent. Englert herself is Australian but the tale gets dull rather quickly and only livens up at the end. Just as the film gets interesting and the actors elevate the drama it finishes.

Fmovies: Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, "Ginger and Rosa" is a complex tale of two adolescent girls, best friends from childhood, coming of age in early 1960s England.

Ginger, so named because of her flaming red hair, is the more socially awkward of the two, and it is she who has recently become obsessed with the threat of global nuclear annihilation. Rosa seems a bit more worldly and experimental overall, more willing to take a dip in that tantalizing pool known as adulthood with all the attended mysteries - and risks - it has to offer. This creates a bit of a problem for the two when Rosa becomes romantically involved with Ginger's handsome step dad who has recently separated from Ginger's mom.

Ginger struggles to find herself amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis, Ban the Bomb rallies and the tumultuous lives of the people around her. Failed marriages, unfulfilled lives, unreliable friendships - these become the preoccupations of a young girl who has the added concern of a world seemingly on the path to blowing itself up to deal with. Or is that broader concern just a convenient way for her to deflect and sublimate the pain brought on by her relationships with her mother, stepfather and best friend, not to mention the perfectly ordinary growing pains common to adolescence? Writer/director Sally Potter doesn't feel the need to answer that question, and one of the movie's strongest assets is that it doesn't deal with its subject matter and themes in black-and-white terms. It feels real precisely because it doesn't pigeonhole its characters or provide a neat, carefully planned-out narrative for the audience to follow. We're allowed to observe these people from an appropriate emotional distance and to render our own judgment - or lack of judgment - on them. They may be screwed up, but we see a lot of ourselves reflected in them, even if we don't care to fully admit it.

Elle Fanning turns in a remarkably self-assured performance as Ginger, and she receives excellent support from Alice Englert as Rosa, Alessandro Nivola as the step dad, and Christina Hendricks from "Mad Men" as her mom. Moreover, Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt and Annette Benning appear as unconventional but sympathetic neighbors who Greek-chorus their way through the film.

you don't watch a movie just because of the performance, fiction movie is supposed to come with a story that can follow the dramatic logic of the plot. the main problem is the lack of the correct characterization. characters remain on the surface and the writer loses the chance to draw a deep well defined character, also the writer's interest to judge the society makes the characters weak and passive. The stories problem is nobody cares enough to do anything and this'd could be a good point if the writer wasn't too involve with some personal desires. Ginger is a confused character not only in her life but in the structure of the story. Obviously she doesn't know what she want. She is too much under influence of the events around that she cannot participate in her own life and then finally she ends up in jail. An activist character that all has done is reading some poems and hiding her face behind a pillow. And this character ends up in prison for no real reason. Writer I is unable to convince audience of the process of the character.

Ginger and Rosa fmovies. In 1976, Nadia Comăneci scored a perfect 10 in Gymnastics which ultimately redefined the sport and required creation of a new scale by which to measure performances. So to does Elle Fanning in Ginger & Rosa. Critics and audiences are so wowed by her performance, they're at a loss for words. In The Guardian's review used such terms as "eerily good" and "scary good." It's not a movie with a big story, it's a slice of life, teenage angst, and the trials and interactions that set our life trajectories for better or worse. It's beautifully rendered with loving attention to detail and human warmth. But don't miss this amazing performance by Elle Fanning, who is poised to redefine film acting.

A commanding performance by Elle Fanning as a teenager struggling to make sense of the adult world in a turbulent period of history is thwarted by a weak script in Sally Potter's Ginger and Rosa. Set in London, England in 1962, the threat of a devastating nuclear war resulting from the Cuban Missile Crisis hangs heavily in the atmosphere, underscored by the film's opening frame depicting the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Japan in August, 1945. Ginger and Rosa (Alice Englert) are best friends who were born in the same hospital at the same time on the exact day of the dropping of the bomb. As children, the two are inseparable, though each has their own personality.

Both rebels in the making, the red-haired Ginger has dreams of becoming a poet. She is the more outgoing of the two and has an independent streak, while Rosa, though also wild, is more introspective. They take a bath together to straighten their jeans, skip school to go the beach, hang out with boys, and take risks by jumping into cars with strangers. Ginger's mother Natalie (Christina Hendricks) and her "free-spirited" husband Rowand (Alessandro Nivoa, a Bruce Springsteen look-alike) are not so accepting of Ginger's close friendship with Rosa, however, especially when she comes home at 2 a.m., but she has support from her godfathers (Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt) as well as from Bella, a politically aware American friend played by Annette Bening.

Ginger's parents are having marital difficulties, mostly because of Rowand's womanizing and the growing dysfunction of her family, together with the threatening world situation, adds stress and uncertainty to her life at a very vulnerable age. Though her father prides himself on being a non-conformist and a pacifist who went to prison rather than fight in the last war, he comes across as self-righteous and, though Ginger adores him, his declarative interactions with her become irritating, especially when his "enlightened" perspective becomes a cover for irresponsible behavior.

Although they still have much in common, especially their disdain for their mothers, Ginger and Rosa take different paths as they grow into adolescence. Caught up in the nuclear hysteria, Ginger becomes increasingly fearful about her future and takes part in protest rallies, while Rosa is drawn more to the church and relationships with boys. Ginger's involvement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament on one occasion, lands her in jail where she has to be bailed out by her godparents. Unfortunately, perhaps contrary to the director's intentions, Ginger's protests against the bomb come across more as an attempt to sublimate her anger at her parents than as a quest for a better world.

After a confrontation with her mother, Ginger moves into her father's small apartment but quickly becomes disillusioned when she learns that Rosa has becomes involved in an affair with Rowand. Her father's inappropriate relationship with her best friend becomes the catalyst for Ginger's growing alienation, leading to a dramatic emotional confrontation with her family. Though Ginger and Rosa is an intense and intimate film, it tends to indulge in stereotyping and its often heavy-handed plotting leaves little room for subtlety or nuance. It is recommended, however, mostly for Elle Fanning's performance which is remarkable for one who was thirteen years old at the time of filming.

A terrific cast and all of director Sally Potter's evident skills with a camera can't save this vacuous account of two girls, best friends from early childhood, growing up in 1960s Britain and getting involved with CND and the sexual revolution. Of course, with Potter you know precisely what you're going to get, (something intelligent as well as something prone to dullness rather than excitement), and this is no different. That 'terrific' cast all act as if heavily dosed on Prozac and there are no characters you might actually want to spend time with. If Potter archives anything with this film it's turning one of the most exciting decades of the last century into one of the dullest on film.