Ginger & Rosa
Ginger & Rosa
PG-13 | 01 February 2013 (USA)
Ginger & Rosa Trailers

A look at the lives of two teenage girls - inseparable friends Ginger and Rosa -- growing up in 1960s London as the Cuban Missile Crisis looms, and the pivotal event the comes to redefine their relationship.

Reviews
Greenes Please don't spend money on this.
Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.
Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.
Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
kambizs you don't watch a movie just because of the performance, fiction movie is supposed to come with a story that can follow the dramatic logic of the plot. the main problem is the lack of the correct characterization. characters remain on the surface and the writer loses the chance to draw a deep well defined character, also the writer's interest to judge the society makes the characters weak and passive. The stories problem is nobody cares enough to do anything and this'd could be a good point if the writer wasn't too involve with some personal desires. Ginger is a confused character not only in her life but in the structure of the story. Obviously she doesn't know what she want. She is too much under influence of the events around that she cannot participate in her own life and then finally she ends up in jail. An activist character that all has done is reading some poems and hiding her face behind a pillow. And this character ends up in prison for no real reason. Writer I is unable to convince audience of the process of the character.
rooprect I bought this DVD months ago, but before I could watch it my dog ran off with it and buried it somewhere. I finally found it the other day (remarkably preserved) and read the DVD box to refresh my memory. Well the description doesn't exactly leap out at you: "Two teenage girls dream of lives bigger than their mothers' frustrated domesticity as the Cold War meets the sexual revolution..." Yawnsville, right? I was tempted to give it back to my dog. But I'm glad I didn't.Right off the bat, "Ginger & Rosa" is an absolute feast for the eyes. I have no idea what special filters, lenses & lighting techniques were used to achieve it, but writer/director Sally Potter puts us in a hazy, nostalgic state while maintaining crisp shots and vivid colors. She used Elle Fanning's red hair to the fullest, complimenting it with an equally glowing, autumn-like palette in the background. Contrasting scenes, the colder ones, seemed bleached & blue, bringing to mind the memorable Beatles lyric "If the sun don't come you get a tan from standing in the English rain." Why am I harping on colors so much? Because, although subtle, the colors are what bring this film to life, and like my review title suggests, you can take a snapshot of any scene and hang it on your wall as art.The story is equally captivating, not in a bang-em-up action way but in a quiet, uneasy "Catcher in the Rye" sort of way. Ginger (Elle Fanning) is reminiscent of the iconic Holden Caufield, a character with deep sensitivities coming to grips with feelings of confusion toward a human world full of hypocrisy and apathetic phonies. In "Catcher", Holden was obsessed with the impossible task of protecting all the children of the world. In "Ginger & Rosa", Ginger is obsessed with saving the world from a nuclear holocaust. As the missile threat looms with no rationality from political powers, and as her home life becomes increasingly troubled with no rationality from parental authority, she starts to come apart at the seams.Elle Fanning truly knocks this one out of the park. I haven't seen this sort of emotional performance from a young actor in ages, if ever. Everyone did a great job of acting, but it was Elle who really took the cake. Her final scene is so powerful it makes you wonder how she conjured up that sort of emotion and if she can ever do it again. I'll definitely be following her career to see.If you like artistic films with powerful visuals that transport you to a nostalgic, not-too-distant past, films like the Italian masterpieces "I'm not Scared" (2003) and "Denti" (2000) by Gabrielle Salvatores, maybe "The Squid and the Whale" (2005) by Noah Baumbach, another 60s British coming of age flick "An Education" (2009), and dare I mention the Spanish masterpiece "Spirit of the Beehive" (1973), then you'll really like this. Don't let your dog run off with this DVD.
Roland E. Zwick Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, "Ginger and Rosa" is a complex tale of two adolescent girls, best friends from childhood, coming of age in early 1960s England.Ginger, so named because of her flaming red hair, is the more socially awkward of the two, and it is she who has recently become obsessed with the threat of global nuclear annihilation. Rosa seems a bit more worldly and experimental overall, more willing to take a dip in that tantalizing pool known as adulthood with all the attended mysteries - and risks - it has to offer. This creates a bit of a problem for the two when Rosa becomes romantically involved with Ginger's handsome step dad who has recently separated from Ginger's mom.Ginger struggles to find herself amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis, Ban the Bomb rallies and the tumultuous lives of the people around her. Failed marriages, unfulfilled lives, unreliable friendships - these become the preoccupations of a young girl who has the added concern of a world seemingly on the path to blowing itself up to deal with. Or is that broader concern just a convenient way for her to deflect and sublimate the pain brought on by her relationships with her mother, stepfather and best friend, not to mention the perfectly ordinary growing pains common to adolescence? Writer/director Sally Potter doesn't feel the need to answer that question, and one of the movie's strongest assets is that it doesn't deal with its subject matter and themes in black-and-white terms. It feels real precisely because it doesn't pigeonhole its characters or provide a neat, carefully planned-out narrative for the audience to follow. We're allowed to observe these people from an appropriate emotional distance and to render our own judgment - or lack of judgment - on them. They may be screwed up, but we see a lot of ourselves reflected in them, even if we don't care to fully admit it.Elle Fanning turns in a remarkably self-assured performance as Ginger, and she receives excellent support from Alice Englert as Rosa, Alessandro Nivola as the step dad, and Christina Hendricks from "Mad Men" as her mom. Moreover, Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt and Annette Benning appear as unconventional but sympathetic neighbors who Greek-chorus their way through the film.
asc85 Elle Fanning gives another fantastic performance, and she is definitely an up and coming star. Unfortunately, her performance is wasted on a film where very, very little happens in almost an hour and a half. I'm not expecting to see "Iron Man" and cars blowing up, but I am expecting to see a storyline. This film reminded me of "The Holy Girl" from 2005, in that both films could have been perhaps 45 minutes in length, and that would have been more than enough time to tell the story without feeling rushed. I really try to use critic reviews on websites like MetaCritic for guidance on what to see, and when I see critics say how magnificent this film is, they really should be sued for malpractice.