Review: ‘The Girl’ Simplistic, Manipulative & Unrealistic

Opening the film is a very close observational frame, depicting our main girl (played by Blanca Engstrom, unfortunately left nameless) receiving shots from a nurse. Some expository dialogue explains that she is to go to Africa for the summer with her parents, working as an aid. However, shortly after her trip to the doctor, her parents learn that she is actually too young for the trip. In one cold quick scene, the parents decide this is a once in a lifetime chance, that they should go anyway regardless if their daughter cannot. The titular character is then left with her alcoholic aunt and a season’s worth of swim lessons, which leave her with a morning house that looks like it belongs to a frat and a frighteningly high diving board. Although rightfully a little cheesed that her parents left, the girl sees a chance to live the summer on her own terms and prove that she is just as responsible as an adult at 9 1/2 years old. Blanca cleverly tricks her aunt into leaving for a few days, and luckily for her, she is terribly irresponsible and a few days stretches into the entire summer. With the unbelievable set-up out of the way, the filmmaker now has the opportunity to be as loose as he wants, throwing his dependable actor in a number of situations with an aim at how preposterous the grown-up world really is. Why his perspective on this is so one-sidedly negative is anyone’s guess.

While pretending to be mature, the girl interacts with a variety of characters ranging in age: her neighbors, their children a few years her senior (who are essentially the two siblings from Catherine Breillat’s “Fat Girl” in every which way), and a male swim-class student that shares her age. The scenes are loosely connected vignettes which focus on their relationships with Blanca and their general lives in society. We soon learn that the neighbors have martial problems and their children are terribly promiscuous. Surely, no one’s perfect, but there must be some positive things about these people. However, because of Edfeldt’s relentless dedication in criticizing the adult world and proving to us that his young lead is better off being herself, most characters come off as terribly generic and empty. The adults are unhappy and/or reckless; the husband turns down his wife’s provocative advances and he reprimands the girl while drunk, ending up in a ditch after he leaves. The teens are delinquents; they come up with a fake lottery in order to buy makeup and wander around talking about sex. Scene after scene of flat characters pushing the same idea are not only exercises in tolerance, but a realization that the man behind the camera really doesn’t have much to say and has no clue what human beings are really like.

This, in addition to his clear detachment from his main character, creates a truly lazy and half-assed final product. If anything, the relationship between boy and girl is played well, as it is not only innocent but illogical and impulsive, much like any relationship should be, especially between two people so young. One scene where they catch tadpoles is particularly charming, though in a typically tactless way, the tadpoles are kept and soon grow into frogs. They’re regrettably used to parallel the girl’s growth for the entire summer, stuck as trite metaphors rather than just being part of a romantic scene between two characters.

Trapped in this world without any sort of optimism, Blanca pulls away and spends more time alone, and it’s only these certain moments that the film truly interests. The girl tries to open a can, but she’s unable to reach and fully utilize the can-opener. Thinking quickly, she opens it with a knife and drinks from a little hole. This scene perfectly shows the main character’s age limitations, it also displays a mature intellect which allows her to quickly problem solve and hold her own. This and following moments such as her grocery shopping basically play like a Swedish independent-film version of “Home Alone,” but it’s surprisingly good. It’s here that the director finally uncovers the realism of the situation and harnesses it, exhibiting the good and bad, making the scene ponderous instead of completely lifeless. If only this aesthetic was used for the entire rest of the film, we’d have something worth talking about.

Eventually it comes to a head: while playing, Blanca involves her boyfriend in an accident and it is unknown whether he will survive. She flees the scene tormented with guilt and attempts to kill herself. Despite the rather captivating dream sequence involving a hot-air balloon crashing near her house, the filmmaker has already pushed too many buttons and and now, with a child killing herself in order to serve the needs of his plot, the bullshit meter rings in an unprecedented fashion. This near offensive idea is not only tonally off, too extreme, and completely uncalled for, but also has absolutely no bearing: the very next scene jumps some time, the protagonists’ parents have returned, and her Aunt has returned as well. She embraces her folks, oddly not at all sour over their decision to leave her and do some good deeds in a foreign country for an entire summer. Supposedly her botched suicide attempt not only taught her to be herself, it also solved all of her problems; following scenes include her making up with her boyfriend (who simply has a broken leg), successfully jumping from the diving board, and finally embracing her youth.

Every question has an answer, and the decision the girl makes in the end, to be herself, is forced enough without the piano score accompaniment and staring-at-mirrored-reflection-shot. “The Girl,” confident in itself, what it means and what it’s trying to say, has no idea how little it actually knows about humanity. [D]