Earnest Girls Town is talky but true

LINKS: Girls Town official site at October Films

By Anna Fuore

Bad poetry, the saying goes, is always earnest. Girls Town, director Jim McKay's first feature, may not be a cinépoem, but it does wear its heart on its sleeve.

Girls Town

Winner of the Filmmaker's Trophy and a Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, Girls Town takes a socially-conscious look at the friendship of four lower-middle to middle class young women in their last semester of high school. Socially conscious, Girls Town tackles a list of social ills that reads like the transcript from a slow night at the teen hotline: rape, suicide, drinking, drugs, unwanted pregnancy, physical abuse, vandalism, sexual harrassment, low self-esteem, and discrimination.

The film has high ambitions, both as a social commentary and as a non-traditional narrative. The girls do all the talking, and always get the last word. They talk themselves through crises and dull moments. In fact, they do so much talking, little else happens on screen. The events that drive the plot occur almost exclusively off camera and in the early minutes of the film; the remaining hour is spent mostly in discussion. The girls discuss their problems, their ambitions, and the hardships they've endured. They introduce themselves to the film audience through direct camera speeches that they deliver in class. The characters unfortunately never surpass their words and show little depth beyond their self-descriptions. The film asks viewers to take the characters for their words, but doesn't substantiate such a leap of faith.

Girls Town tells too much, and suggests too little. A hyperactive script overcompensates for the diminutive plot, which leads to plenty of chatting. The dialogue is for the most part convincing--there's just too much of it. Lili Taylor (Patty), Bruklin Harris (Angela), and Anna Grace (Emma) show a comfortable mastery of their characters' accents and slang, but a few clumsy lines slip into most scenes. Near the end of the film, Patty, exclaims: "This ain't no 90210!" It's not My Dinner with Andre, either.

A documentary maker who has produced music videos for R.E.M. and Ziggy Marley, McKay brings to Girls Town the stylistic trademarks of a live-footage film. Layers of establishing shots fade into each other before a given scene. Feet traipse down sidewalks in ponderous slow motion. The kino-eye style clashes with content: this is not life unrehearsed, but a scripted drama. McKay's documentary embellishments feel too weighty when the countering force of live-footage spontaneity is missing. The ironic discrepancy between word and deed, or the failure of words to express the deed, is the fuel that fires most documentaries. The dialogue in this pseudo-documentary is, in effect, too precise. It leaves room only for surface ironies which are then quickly disarmed.

Girls Town deserves credit, however, for the risks it takes in going against the conventional Hollywood formula for narrative films. McKay's film rejects standard plot structure, which arguably directs its appeal to men, in favor of a new approach to storytelling. The film story centers around the experiences of four young women, and the film structure conforms to this circular model.

The screenplay itself was the collaborative effort of McKay, Grace, Harris, Taylor, and Denise Casarro, based on numerous improv sessions they conducted. The process culminated in a mere 12 days of shooting in June 1995. The collaborative writing and experimental structure of Girls Town represent advances in filmmaking that only an independent film could make.

An added bonus is that the credits are 100 percent free of Winona Ryder and the Gin Blossoms. (An all-female soundtrack features P.J. Harvey, Salt 'N Pepa, and Queen Latifah, among others.) The film is also bolstered by excellent photography under the direction of Russell Lee Fine, who transforms street scenes into updated Hopper paintings.

Tableaux and innovative structuring fail to save Girls Town from itself. Words without action leave little on screen to entertain viewers. The movie is, nevertheless, an earnest attempt.