Ginger & Rosa – Straight Character Piece With a Fine Cast

Writer/director Sally Potter’s follow-up to the flawed Yes and the underappreciated Rage is a fairly straight character piece with a fine cast and rather less of her irritatingly pretentious quirks. In early ‘60s, pre-Beatles London we meet Ginger (the all-grown-up Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert, Jane Campion’s daughter), inseparable teen friends obsessed with the looming Cuban Missile Crisis and part of a left-wing group of intellectuals (and pseudo-intellectuals) that includes Ginger’s long-suffering Mum Natalie (Christina Hendricks) and up-himself Dad Roland (Alessandro Nivola), family friend May Bella (Annette Bening) and an amiable gay couple both named Mark (Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt). And, with fatalism in the air, Ginger and Rosa try their first joint, ponder the whole sex thing, iron their hair (?) and go sailing and generally bonding with Roland, who prattles on about his non-conformity until you want to slap him and just has to be the one who tears the girls apart (and no spoilers are necessary here, as there wouldn’t be much of a movie if he didn’t act like a predatory scumbag).