edit: there's more to add to this review, but right now I'm dealing with elbow bursitis and am trying not to aggrevate it. In due time perhaps.
The "coming of age" adage that this movie is given does make sense to a point. Katie Jarvis plays the lead character Mia, and focus of this movie; ultimately she does "come of age" but with a lot of angles and hurdles to get by.
This movie is realistic and dark. Her character lives with her lackadaisical mother and kid sister. Both of whom
don't have concern of the language they use nor the things they put in their body (the younger sister in 1 scene
is seen with a friend smoking a cigarette, and she's maybe 9 or 10 years old).
Mia does not have many friends really. She is shown calling presumably 1 of them early on in the story, but we never meet this friend.
She likes to dance, hip-hop primarily. She even watches, criticizes and ends up head-butting 1 of the girls dancing in
her neighborhood. Pretty much of the feeling she's a far superior dancer. I suppose it's an ego-boost to her.
She wants to free this tied up horse, but isn't actually able to, due to the people who have it chained up being shady
and when they find her, they end up roughing her up. She is lucky to get away from them more or less unscarred.
Probably the most compelling character in the movie is her mum's new boyfriend Connor, played by Michael Fassbender who she ends up bonding with in a few ways, even after she criticizes him, more or less due to seeing him with her mum. But later, that feeling is
gone when he helps with her dance audition and ends up making a pass at her successfully.
We come to learn he has an ex and a daughter. She breaks in to their place and sees video footage of his young daughter
and I would guess partially out of jealousy and partially of anger for him fleeing her (and her mum I suppose) she sort of
kidnaps the daughter and actually ends up pushing her in the water. But her sense and heart is good enough not to abandon the much younger girl.
I sense to a point what she did with the daughter was similar to what she did with the horse; wanting to set them free.
A bit like her own situation not wanting to go off to some boarding school her mother is trying to send her to basically
out of lack of responsibility on both her own and mum's part.
Kierston Wareing is good in the role of her mother, although quite different than in It's a Free World the other thing I saw her in. I suppose in a way I felt she was a little underused, but the film's focus is on Jarvis, so I follow why.
83/100
similar movies:
