Starring: Emily Browning, Olly Alexander, Hannah Murray, Pierre Boulanger.
God Help The Girl follows three young lost souls as they find each other through music.
British indie films are my thing and there seems to be a lot coming out set in Glasgow, such as this one. What makes God Help The Girl even better, is that it's written by Stuart Murdoch, band member of the most wonderful band, Belle & Sebastian.
I feel as though the film tried to tackle a lot of subjects, which is a very difficult thing to do and I feel as though sometimes it was kind of irrelevant. The film starts off and you find out the main girl, Eve (Emily Browning), has an eating disorder. Immediately I thought, yes great, not many films discuss this but as the film went on it was just kind of background noise. In this sense, it got a bit confusing to concentrate on what was important to the story and what wasn't.
Something else that immediately stood out was the cast. Hannah Murray, who played Cassie in Skins was a main character alongside Olly Alexander from Years and Years and also from Skins and Emily Browning from The Series of Unfortunate Events. I think that they all connected really well together, had different elements of quirky-ness which brought the film into a different light for me.
The cinematography, created by Giles Nuttgens, was definitely a strong point. The settings, the props, the shot types and the movements all worked very well together. The film was also produced by the producer of The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, so this instantly provided unique, bright and eccentric shots which 100% made the film stand out as a whole.
Although I did find the film very enjoyable and loved the fact that it was a musical (as this is quite rare to see these days), I do feel as though the film went on for too long. Whereas I didn't lose interest, I didn't give it my full attention towards the end. Again, I feel as though this is due to the film trying to fit so many different problems and perspectives into 111 minutes.
Overall, I would say that God Help The Girl had all the qualities to be a great film and it almost was but it just wasn't all there for me. Saying that, this has definitely been one of the best british indie films to come out in a very long time. If you liked Cherrybomb (2009) then there is a strong chance you'll like this too.
(I would like to apologise for the horrendous writing, I watched the film a while ago and haven't wrote in about 3 months)
