White Girl

This is an interesting film, one with probably more potential for future greatness than actual rewatch value. The acting is top notch all around, from the two leads who go through many changes to the lawyer who has truly seen it all delivering a chilling speech about black people in jail. A very promising debut from a female director that knows her stuff, from the moment doves fly away when two lovers are reunited or that moment when the camera gets tired of watching the white girl getting taken advantage of too many times and hides from the scene behind a wall before going back to a mirror reflection of said image. While at times playing like a softcore porno a la Game of Thrones and there are too many sex scenes just thrown around, the drama is intact and the WAY that the story is told is very compelling.

First time writer-director Elizabeth Woods delivers a raw, energetic, and downright uncomfortable tale about a young college student named Leah, who moves to the big apple and finds love in one of the local drug dealers named Blue, one night of partying later finds the two separated as he's arrested on possession of narcotics, and that's 3 strikes for him, and Leah must do whatever she can to be reunited with him. It's an ugly and uneasy look at white privilege, and the self destruction of such a young, promising girl who just can't seem to stay away from taking the trip down the white brick road. This is a roaring directorial debut from Elizabeth Woods, and quite the controversial, personal one at that.

One can never get a good movie with a bad script. Add mediocre acting and things are going to get worse. Average camera is not going to help. And so on. It's down and down and even more down.

The characters are flat. The stories are flat. Sex? Sure. Boring. Sex is just a way to add viewership. Only to dump the moralist story: this is what happens when girls want to have fun. No. The vagina was meant to take babies out. Naughty girls get in trouble and than are raped. See? Girls should be pure. Find a middle class home in a middle class neighborhood and raise healthy children through the most recent parenting fads.

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.

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...