White Girl

I just could not connect with this film. There is no message, no "learning curve" or "lesson learned" or saving grace and I don't like that. It was brutal, and confronting and and the downward spiral of the female lead was sickening and pointless. I get that this is while happens in real life, and this perhaps is where the film was lost on me... I'm a privileged white girl who now at 35 years of age has managed to keep my nose completely clean because I made good choices. I get that this is the downward spiral of so many, who either get caught up or deliberately put themselves in those situations. I found it really really hard to watch and considered turning it off halfway through but pushed through, I feel like I've wasted 2 hours and got no enjoyment whatsoever out of it - and the film hasn't really made a point or has a purpose for me. This review will probably upset a few people and going of majority of the reviews, I have a completely different opinion on the film to many others...

A young woman falls for a small time drug dealer who ends up in jail facing a long sentence. She has no money but needs 17 000 dollars to get a decent lawyer and pay a dealer back. How far will she go to get it? You have to go long along with the idea that she loves this man (that she just met) so much she'll do however many people it takes to get him out. Most of the film she is snorting coke and having sex but it is necessary for the context of the plot.

This film is gritty and down right depressing but entertaining at the same time. Try and catch this one but be warned (or notified) that there are a few explicit scenes.

Thematically, White Girl is exactly what it says on the tin, it's about race, and about gender. It's an attempt at outlining the main character's naivety and her ability to come out of it unscathed as a result of her privilege. An idea that, if it wasn't already obvious enough, Elizabeth Wood beats us over the head with in the scene where Leah has dinner with the lawyer.

White Girl is unapologetically feminist, and being directed by a woman, it gets a lot of this right, Leah isn't a trope, she's not a stereotype, she's a naive young girl who makes a lot of really, really terrible decisions. But while this is the basis of her character, the protagonist, as well as the rest of the people in this film, are only explored on a surface level. Meaning that it's difficult to care about what they do, or what happens to them. Especially Leah, who knows that as a pretty white girl, there's a lot that she can get away with, and come out unharmed. And we know that too.

Not only is White Girl difficult to get pulled in to as a result of its lack of a real sense of consequence, it also seems to push us away with its sloppy attempt at shock cinema. Every other scene is someone snorting coke, getting their tits out, or puking their guts up (is there anyone in this movie who doesn't do drugs?) Some of the comments on sexuality, especially female sexuality are interesting, and there's clearly a lot to say here about the male gaze and the danger of that towards young women, but then the gratuitous sex scenes never stop in an attempt to shock us, and we lose interest.

As a drug dealer drama, and a comment on race, Wood hits all of the tropes that we'd expect. Many of the characters are stereotypes, and the writing for the male drug dealers sounds like it was written by my dad, guessing how he things a drug dealer probably talks. The attempts at making the love interest more of a love interest and less of a sex interest were hilarious at times, this movie just couldn't get the dialogue right for those characters at all, it was awkward as hell.

White Girl was summed up for me when Doug from The Hangover got cocaine snorted off his dick.

4.5/10

Just saw the movie White Girl. This is one that I'll have to spend some time thinking about. Very controversial, even pornographic at points. Cultures clash in unexpected ways when a couple of white college girls move into a Latino neighborhood and start hanging out with the local drug dealers. Reminiscent of the German film Victoria (it almost seems to be a remake of sorts except not shot all in one take) with a touch of Spring Breakers (if you haven't seen that one don't be fooled by the title, it's pretty horrific), all wrapped up in Project X I suppose. Nothing is romanticized here, especially not the inevitable tragic ending which is the ultimate statement about white privilege.

Unlike most reviewers I saw this movie with intimate knowledge of street life, and the director got a whole lot right there. And as well, I've known noobs like the lead actress who got themselves into a life about which they knew very little until they were so deep in so fast they couldn't get back out. So with that, I was on my seat edge as our heroine went from precipice to precipice, nearly always avoiding the fall. Without a spoiler alert, she does virtually everything in this film you could to get killed or maimed and the writer/director finds ways for her to fail yet survive.

There's a lot of grit here, from hard parties to transactional activities between employer and employee, and then client and counsel. It was all done very realistically, scarily so in many cases.I would love to know where the writer/director got her adviser on street sales - whoever it was really knew the game. See this movie.But be prepared to be scared, if you know the streets.