It would be naïve to believe that renaming Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles (or Girl Gang) to Girlhood for its North American release is a mere coincidence, and not a pointed rejoinder to Richard Linklater’s award-winning behemoth. Certainly, there is no denying Boyhood’s success at illustrating the bittersweet pangs of growing up. But by reaching for universal appeal, it erroneously posits the middle-class white suburban experience as both a relatable and an aspirational ideal—the positioning of Patricia Arquette’s character as a patronizing white savior to her one-time backyard laborer-turned-restaurant manager is an especially tone-deaf example. There is also a linear flatness to Linklater’s experiment. It is an exercise in affect that can be boiled down to an empty platitude, that, as Rod Stewart tells us, “It’s been a long road getting from there to here.”
Girlhood reveals Sciamma’s ongoing thematic interest, digging into a very specific female coming-of-age experience not as a series of events on the journey to womanhood, but to capture the moment of “becoming,” that fluid, uncertain in-between quality of youth. Filmed in the Parisian suburbs Bagnolet and Bobigny, Girhood follows Marieme (Karidja Touré), a French-African teenager grappling with family responsibilities, bad grades, adolescent crushes, and an intimidating older brother. Shut out of high school and faced with the unappealing option of vocational school, Marieme is embraced by a group of tough girls Adiatou (Lindsay Karamoh), Fily (Mariétou Touré), and their de facto leader Lady (Assa Sylla) who rechristens Marieme as “Vic” (“as in victory”).
As pointed out by film critic Zeba Blay in her Shadow and Act review, mainstream film and media tend to view black girls as “women before they hit puberty, thrust into a kind of pseudo-adulthood by a world often unable to view them outside the context of hard-fixed stereotypes.” Sciamma, however, revels in Marieme’s transformation into Vic. Avoiding the easy stereotypes of gang thuggishness, Sciamma positions the girls’ acts of petty crime as harmless teenage rebellion, or a means of exercising power where they may otherwise be powerless. Where Marieme’s life is constrained by the strictures of her family life and school prospects, as Vic she is an authoritative figure able to move through the local girl gang culture with ease and poise. Even her moment of becoming is staged almost as a superhero origin story. While doing dishes, she discreetly pockets a knife similar to one wielded by Lady. Framed from behind, she grips the edge of the counter backlit by the light over the sink, fully committing her allegiance to “Vic.”
Marieme’s adoption of the accoutrements and behavior of a new persona is not new territory for Sciamma. In Tomboy (2011), ten-year-old protagonist Laure (Zoé Héran) is mistaken for a boy by a local girl in her new neighborhood. The boyish Laure immediately goes along with the deception, taking the name “Mickäel.” Even at such a young age, interaction among Mickäel’s peer group are starkly gendered. To fit in requires careful observation of boys’ behavior—after witnessing a male playmate spit on the soccer field, Mickäel practices the same in the bathroom mirror at home. But Mickäel’s biologically female body ultimately constrains his full commitment to boyhood. Bathroom breaks for him to slip away unnoticed to squat in the woods, and a group swim outing requires a modified bathing suit complete with a homemade prosthetic penis fashioned hastily from blue Play-Doh.
Images of containment and limitation recur throughout Sciamma’s work. When Laure/Mickäel first observes the neighborhood boys from afar, she peers at them through a chain-link fence: she relates to their maleness, but is held back from fully being able to join them. The blocky apartment complex where Laure/Mickäel’s family lives is a maze of sharp right angles and concrete barriers that evoke a sense of restraint. The apartment projects of Girlhood also make use of this claustrophobic mise-en-scène, with Vic seeking the freedom to “do as she pleases” in spaces that threaten to absorb her completely.
The liminal spaces of Sciamma’s coming-of-age narratives reach for something beyond a linear progression of time and adolescence development. The indelible images of her first feature Water Lilies (2007) are ones of suspended animation. Underwater shots of a middle-school synchronized-swimming team as observed by Marie (Pauline Acquart) display the rapidly kicking feet that are belied by the relative stillness above the surface. Marie, who harbors an unrequited crush on team captain Floriane (Adèle Haenel) hovers below the surface, teetering on the edge of wanting, wanting to be loved, and burgeoning self-respect. Tomboy’s Laure/Mickäel hovers precariously between boy/girl identity markers. Arguably the most violent act of the film occurs when Mickäel is forced into a dress by his mother, a visual charged with unsettling cognitive dissonance.
Girlhood explores in-betweenness as a space of both uncertainly and agency. Holed up in a hotel room on a weekend getaway, the girls try on shoplifted club dresses and lip-synch to Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” The song plays out in full as the girls sing along, bathed in blue light, an arresting sequence out of step with the temporal momentum of the rest of the film. “I told myself it was a perfect moment,” Marieme later recalls. But she cannot remain in that moment forever. She eventually leaves home to pursue a life in the city after being recruited by a local drug dealer. Beset by financial and threats to her personal safety, she returns to her family’s apartment complex. Hovering in front of the security door, her choices are laid out in front of her: return to her stifling family life or to her dangerous city life. It is an untenable position, but one that is again suspended in time and the choice is entirely hers. And for one more perfect moment, Vic lives again, neither here nor there.
