Strange Little Girls (2004) User Reviews (2)

Interesting enough to be worth a look but has been done better elsewhere

[bob the moo · 25 May 2005]

Two teenage girls head into the city together to go shopping. In the dressing room of a clothes store Julie puts on lots of pairs of bras at the same time while Sarah allows her imagination to run a little wild – both are helped by a little bit of drink as well. Fleeing the store with alarms ringing the two continue their evening by following a strange man they see on the tube, seeing it all as a bit of an adventure. Albert (as they have called him) leads them into a pub where they immediately start getting male attention.

This interesting little short starts off innocently enough with the two girls being shown as having problems at home of some sort; then we follow them into an "adult" world that they think they can handle but soon find themselves adrift in a relatively simple series of situations that are just beyond them. As a narrative not a great deal happens but it still manages to be quite interesting because it is more about the girls as teenagers rather than a story building to something. However this is not to say that it couldn't have been better, because it could have been. The writing didn't do as much as it could have done to provide a real insight into the characters of the girls and seemed to rely on the actresses a great deal. It is still interesting but it didn't leave me with a great deal to think about afterwards.

The cast are luckily quite convincing. Both leads are good; Beals is convincing and still holds onto a childlike quality while Kennedy is more sexual and playful showing that she is pushing to be older as soon as she can. Both approaches provide interesting characters and they cover up for the narrative a lot. Procter is strong but I must admit not understanding his character much other than him providing us with a frame for looking at the adult view of emerging child sexuality. He is interesting but none of the people in the pub are much more than stick figures.

Overall this film could have given me more but it is to its credit, it had made me interested enough to want more. The two actresses really do a good job and help cover the lack of narrative for the most part. Worth seeing as a look at the difficult time between childhood and adulthood but it won't please many viewers and has been done better elsewhere.

Morality ?

[Theo Robertson · 5/10 · 25 November 2005]

The concept behind STRANGE LITTLE GIRLS seems to be something of a redemption plot whereby the lead characters find out that if you play with fire you get burnt and I have very mixed feelings whilst watching this since Amnesty International published a survey result earlier this week that showed that one third of people in Britain think a rape victim contributed to their fate if she dressed provocatively or flirted with the perpetrator . All throughout the running time of this short I felt both Julie and Sarah were going to run into very serious trouble with their behaviour . They steal from a shopping centre ( Which leads to the one and only moment of light relief ) then for some inexplicable reason follow a man into a pub which leads to ....

Going back to the Amnesty survey this has somewhat prejudiced my view of the film . I've no idea what I would have thought of it if the AI survey hadn't flashed through my head . Who's to blame if someone is raped ? The perpetrator of course and only the perpetrator . Nothing happens to the two girls thankfully though I was puzzled if they'd really learned their lesson and I wonder how the audience had felt if Julie and Sarah had been the victims of a sexual assault ?