17 ragazze

Sometimes I just do not want to live on this planet anymore. A "poetic" movie about girls who want to become mass pregnant, because they are kinda bored? And that did actually happen somewhere? Having a kid in adolescence is probably the totally worst rebellion you can possibly do. It is actually just a "f*k you" shout at your very own parents, then you will return to them and beg for help. You will have no bloody idea what to do and will not be able to survive without their help. You will became even more dependent on them. You will waste your life and theirs as well. There is nothing poetic or charming on such rebellion.

It is just a pure explosion of idiocy, that will very probably lead to wasted life. Young marriage will rarely work and hardly anybody will have interest in 22 years old single mothers with 6 years old kids. Usually the less successful, the old, the divorced, the outsiders, amazing choices here. I have seen this multiple times. You have passed education for parenthood and this leads to inevitable career choices. Poorly paid bartenders, cashiers and such. Then you are in early 30ies, fighting your own teenage rebel at home. Your life is full of badly masked self hate and hate to men. It's easy to spot these people, just walk into bar at late hour and you will meet some of them. I'm really disgusted by this sort of young stupid and feel no pity to them.

I'm so angry by such "poetic" movies that show this bored spoiled youngsters as a "dreamers". Yes, in some sense even the Mason's family were "dreamers". That makes them no less disgusting. "Nothing can stop 17 years old girl that dreams." Oh yes, something can. Your kids, baby. The game is over now, the dream is over. This "rebellion" will make a lifetime slave from you, because you were so so so incredibly stupid. And making advertisements for such decisions is no less stupid.

It just plain and boring, the plot is basically nonexistent and they lost an opportunity to treat such an important theme.

They show this group of teen that decides to get pregnant without giving a valid explanation and without considering the psychology of the characters which is really important in this situations: we barely get any emotional responses from the girls, almost no reaction from the parents and the fathers just seem to not exist.

They even had the chance to evolve the character of florénce but they totally wasted it, she needed attention in almost a pathological way and everybody seemed to hate her and we don't even get a full chance to understand why.

The only good thing is the end where they treat an important theme even if superficially.

I feel like they wasted an opportunity.

Instantaneously, 17 Girls reminds me of the American film The Bling Ring, which centered around a group of spoiled adolescents growing up in Hollywood that would venture out at night and rob celebrity's homes, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of values. Their plans were more than just rob whomever whenever but sporadic, carefully-planned that would take place when the celebrity was out of town, judging by their Twitter feed and social networking activity.

The film was immediately criticized for being empty, somewhat superficial, and lacking any real depth, and brief searches for the Coulin sisters' (Delphine and Muriel) 17 Girls has warranted similar criticism. Let me reiterate the reason for the emptiness one more time. 17 Girls is based off another unfathomably true story, revolving around a group of teen girls who made a pact to get pregnant around the same time so they could all deliver at he same time and raise their babies together. This kind of act is empty and stupid, and the Coulin sisters make not attempt to disguise the true stupidity of what these girls did. However, they do make an attempt to justify it, and that is when we have a film.

This pact begins when seventeen-year-old Camille (Louise Grinberg) discovers she is pregnant after the condom breaks during sex with her partner. By making the choice to keep the child, despite abortion and adoption being available options, she manages to encourage her friends to also have children and get pregnant. One even resorts to getting impregnated by a twenty-four-year old homeless man.

The reason the girls give to justify their pact is their desire to be loved unconditionally and their hunger for companionship. If one were to look closely at the homelives of these girls, one would see nothing but emptiness and sadness, with no real parental guidance or dependency whatsoever. Their parents are barely around to cook and care for them let alone give them moral guidance or help them along in school or in life. The girls resort to getting pregnant as a means of being the parent they never adequately had growing up.

Make no mistake, these are shallow and narrow-minded girls and the Coulin sisters dually make note of that. The girls choose to go through with a process that is supposed to be wonderful and quite an emotionally-enriching experience and cheapen it to a spur-of-the-moment impulse that effectively robs it of any and all humanity. However, the Coulin sisters bravely try and justify why the girls did, which is the real uphill battle. Out of all the tabloid stories, the Coulin sisters picked one of the toughest to justify and humanize and the result with 17 Girls is remarkable.

I'm somewhat optimistic that one day we'll get a version of "the pregnancy pact" that tries to give an even deeper humanization of the girls involved with the pact. With 17 Girls, we're kind of at arm's length away from the story, never closing in on even one of the girls involved with this pact. However, as stated, the lack of character development only further gives these characters the vapidness they accentuated in real life by doing such an unthinkable act and cheapening what is supposed to be an intimate and massively rewarding experience. I constantly see people (myself included) complaining that movies shortchange their heroes and don't give proper justice to their own character. Here's a film that does perfect justice to its characters and their real-life personalities.

Starring: Louise Grinberg. Directed by: Delphine and Muriel Coulin.

Whatever bar I once had to measure boredom while watching a movie, it might have been surpassed by 17 Girls. It's hard for me to even express how little interest I had in this film. I dozed off 3 times, before deciding I had to stop and wait to finish the film the next day. Basically what seems to have happened is that a couple of filmmakers found out the true story of a high school where a bunch of girls all decided to get pregnant and raise their kids together. The problem was that, when writing the screenplay, they didn't take the time in order to make a plot or characters to help engage the audience in the story of these girls, so there's very little movie here. There are barely any defining characteristics to differentiate any of the stars of the film other than their names and faces. A couple times they have very minor personality traits, but most of the way through it's just a mass of pregnant teens. The ending might have been the most anticlimactic thing I've ever seen, and it left me annoyed. There's simply no movie here, I don't even know if there is enough for a short film. Perhaps that's the artistic statement Delphine and Muriel Coulin were trying to make, a film that was just as vapid as the teens featured in it. If you are looking to fall asleep quickly, then a little time with 17 Girls might take care of that for you.

Men, women, young, old, when somebody from France makes a movie about coming of age the best word to describe that work is slime.

Slow script. Rigid delivery. The production team is unable to get closer to the chosen issue, but at least they can take the clothes off some young bodies and parade them around for the viewing pleasure of an audience that might creep a lot of people.