A Girl's Own Story

Funny and tragic stories of schoolgirls who maintain a precarious balance between kissing pictures of the Beatles and committing incest, between childhood and adulthood. Beautiful use of space heaters. The print I saw had muddy sound, though, so I had to strain to hear in some parts.

A girl growing up in the era when the Beatles were what girls going through puberty obsessed about, deals with her own boring life in a dull fashion.

When I looked at three of Jane Campion's early short subjects, I discovered they were about trivial and boring issues of the moment: the sort of boredom that inspires us to creativity, insanity, or worst of all, to become award-winning film-makers. We all wish to be beautiful, brilliant, desired, living in a stress-free world that engages us at every moment, but over which we have full control. Alas, none of us get that. Some of them, in our daydreams, cause us to say "What was I thinking?"

I'm afraid this short subject is one of those moments. Not only do I not know what I am thinking of, I'm not sure that I know what Miss Campion was thinking about, except possibly that growing up is hard.

Three girls are sexually curious Beatles fans. It's a black and white thirty minute short. It's early in the career of director Jane Campion. It's definitely edgy in its subject matter right from the beginning as the teen girls look at a drawing of the penis. The most daring part is portraying the girls with all the curiosity of real teenagers. There is a dangerous energy about this film. The stories are a little jagged. They need more connective tissue and better flow. The dinner scene is compelling and the cat play scene is unforgettable. I would do away with the music video at the end but I can excuse it as experimental. Apparently, Nicole Kidman at 14 rejected the role because the material is too explicit. This is definitely intriguing for Campion fans.

I recently watched "In the Cut," and found its connectives strange and exciting. So I went to this to see them when young and raw.

Supposedly, this is Campion's first long form film. It didn't quite work as a film the first time because it is so fractionated. Her earlier "Passionless Moments" was in the Greenaway tradition of aggregating small bits, small glances, into a world. The same is carried here and though there is a story — something actually happens to a poor girl — the bits of the story do not connect. It frustrated me.

But then I got it. Breillat, for instance, stands on our side when telling us about women and especially girls. She gives the genuine insight but uses the smooth form. Campion stands on the girl's side: this fragmentation, this lack of narrative continuity, this disconnectedness from sense — it would be what the girl would experience.

"Each of us has a fragile presence that fades almost as it forms." That is Campion, literally. She captures that melting snowflake, the tragedy of the melt from within. The collapse of order.

There is nothing like visiting the beginnings of filmmakers you have come to trust.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.