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| 'Cue histrionics, and then some, most notably from Rosa parent alpha, Christina Hendricks, wasted up till that point and then given the dishonour of the film's most clichéd moment.' |
A prime example of the beautifully shot 'gorgeous nothing', where absent parents cause for all sorts of not-very-interesting problems for flame-haired Ginger (Elle Fanning) and stroppy rebel Rosa (Alice Englert), the film which takes its lead duos' names is as wet as a handshake with a nervous gentleman under Niagra falls.
Leaden down with false teenage angst, the leads amble around aimlessly for much of the film, before one inevitably takes it too far with a man she shouldn't have. Cue histrionics, and then some, most notably from Rosa parent alpha, Christina Hendricks, wasted up till that point and then given the dishonour of the film's most clichéd moment.
Not that the rest of Ginger & Rosa ever threatens to light up the screen like the former's hair, a fitting metaphor for a film shot beautifully Robbie Ryan but dropped into dullness by writer/director Sally Potter. It is telling that it is not the lead characters who hold our attention but the intriguing camp duo of Mark (Timothy Spall) and Mark Two (Oliver Platt), the latter as wasted as Hendricks, the former with the few moments to shine sadly denied him in recent roles.
Even they though, and fairly stirring performances throughout, including a trademark skin-crawling effort from Alessandro Nivola, cannot save us from really overt aimlessness. The opening ten minutes are a pastel perfume commercial. What follows is apparently a tirade against the nuclear bomb, many, many years out of date.
Finally, of course, the lingering metaphorical bomb goes off for Ginger in the aforementioned bout of family chaos, which would be worth caring about if you had reason to give a hoot towards any individual there present.
I'm not convinced that the story was ever there to begin with but if it was, it gets washed away under too many hues of boring nothingness.
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