"About A Girl" - Brian Percival

Textual Analysis
- Shares title similarities to the film "About A Boy"
- Text message on opening, creating assumptions it is about a teenager, as they are stereotypically associated with advances in technology
- Getting dark, isolated field, why is she dancing?
- About A Girl, we want to find out about her, only shown silhouette, builds intrigue, at this point we expect her to be a soft, young girl
- Expectations are broken, she has a bushy accent, hard, harsh exterior
- Seems naive, not well educated, illiterate
- Kitchen sink realism
- Council estate, bickering
- Mother relates to the father as a 'bastard' to the children. Divorced parents, bad relationship.
- Girl is very upbeat and chatty
- We, as the audience understand the reality of her situation through the cutaways
- The audio/narrative alone isn't enough, as she plays down the reality of her circumstances tremendously
- We start to see she is not as innocent and naive as originally perceive her as. "i'm not that innocent. I know i'm not"
- "I'm thirteen, i'm not a child anymore", the audience can see she has been forced to grow up quickly.
- She is smart, she doesn't believe exactly what people tell her, especially her father.
- Our initial reaction to her and judgement of her is completely turned around, the audience can now empathise with her.
- Working class surroundings
- "Bless", she is patronising her father, not as naive as we, the audience, originally believed
- She is neglected, she makes out that she does not care, maybe she has had to put up this 'front'
- On bus with friends, we see her young, fun, sweet inner-being.
- Singing is her dreamworld, her escape, she puts her headphones in and blocks out her troubles
- Contrast in personality from when she is with family, and when she is with friends
- She has a cheeky, clever persona
- She knew the perfume saleswoman was being patronising and played on that, very clever comeback for a thirteen year old girl
- Mother spends all money on cigarettes, not food for her children
- Girl wants to spend all money with father, she shows hostility with her mother, the audience are not told why this is
- She wants to escape her background, singing is seen as the only hope for her
- Her mother buys a scratchcard, showing she wants to escape the situation, background and surroundings just as much as her daughter
- Girl is singing the infamous Britney Spears song "Stronger than yesterday", very relevant to her situation, also showing how she has had to grow up too quickly as opposed to other young girls her age
- No music in this short film, illustrating kitchen sink realism, documentry-like. Also highlighting how real the situation is as non-diegetic music does not exist in real life.
- Contrast in her personality - scenes where she is contemplating and scenes where she is happy, singing and dancing
- Ideas the audience originally assumed about relationships with her parents are confirmed
- From the close-ups of the girl she looks allot older, taller and bigger. From the wide shots we see how small and young she is in comparison to her surroundings, and how serious her situations are for a girl of her age, this is very shocking to the audience.
- "Blood or strawberry sauce", there is violence within the household
- Pathetic Fallacy is used throughout, life is grey, dull, so is the weather, representation of all girls within the community as this girl is not named.
- Mother through dog in cannel, maybe the girl sees this as the only way, it is all she knows
- The girl is a product of her environment
- Light at the end of the river after throwing her baby in the cannel
- Girl is moving on, "Still gonna get a 99 anyway"
- The bag is plastic, it's the girls suffocation, it is then released
- The plastic bag represents the girl, the baby comes out of the bag in the way like she has just given birth to it
- The bag then gets trapped on the fence, she cannot walk away from the situation, it will stay there, and haunt her forever
- The girl has no name, she is insignificant, disposable, just like the plastic bag and the baby