Elle Fanning Gives a Fantastic Performance in the Superb Coming of Age Story "Ginger and Rosa"

It's fitting that Christina Hendricks plays the mother, Natalie, of one of the titular characters of Ginger and Rosa as the film shares a good deal of commonality with the television series Mad Men, in which she also stars. Both are set in the 1960's but are less concerned with the time period itself than with examining the lives of their characters with the 60's merely as a convenient, interesting backdrop. Ginger and Rosa nails its period setting with a rich sense of well-observed detail which proves to be wonderful. However, the thing that sticks with me most is the thoroughly assured and complex performance that Elle Fanning gives as Ginger. Ginger and Rosa is a keenly wrought look at coming of age and childhood friendships, and it is funny, moving, saddening, and all too familiar to watch Ginger go through the many ups and downs of being on the cusp of adulthood.

The film is set in London just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. The historical events increasingly become an outwardly expressed parallel to Ginger's inner state that becomes further and further turmoiled (This parallel becomes a little too on the nose towards the end but it's handled subtly for the most part throughout). Ginger's life long friendship with Rosa (Alice Englert) becomes strained as their diverging interests begin to put them at odds. Rosa has equal screen-time at first but soon becomes a foil to Ginger. Ginger is the intellectual, raised by a pretentious writer father Roland (Allesandro Nivola -- who begs that she call him Roland); she becomes interested in activism, particularly nuclear disarmament. Rosa comes from a broken home -- her father left when she was little -- and now has become the more rebellious of the two. Rosa keeps pushing Ginger to try out new experiences, hooking up with boys, smoking cigarettes, staying out late and drinking.

But despite being seemingly the more rebellious, Rosa is also concerned with pleasing boys and being a good future housewife, where as Ginger is more defiant and less conventional (She's a feminist in the making). Ginger is more naturally drawn to her father, looking up to him with reverence and accepting at face all his intellectual prattling. Roland and Natalie's marriage is on the rocks; Roland is sleeping with his students and lying right to Natalie's face. They end up separating and Ginger is made to stay with her mother. However, she finds her mother overbearing and asks to live with her father, but she slowly discovers that her father is far less of the sympathetic figure she's imagined him to be -- especially as his eyes start to fall on Rosa.

The film's effectiveness draws upon its quiet intimacy. It's hyper-focused on its point of view from Ginger and we experience things through her eyes. This intimacy gives the film a lived-in quality that makes a number of moments disquieting and uncomfortable. Certain turns in the plot might seem some what implausible or crazy (perhaps too melodramatic), but in context they unnervingly and dishearteningly make sense -- especially the film's final moments which are devastating.

The period detail is excellent, the performances are wonderful and nuanced, and the story works exceedingly well as both a period piece and a coming of age story.

Grade: A-