“We keep to ourselves. We can’t trust anyone.”
Girl is the debut feature from Glasgow-based director Adura Onashile, making its UK premiere as part of the opening gala of Glasgow Film Festival.
It follows immigrant mother and daughter Grace and Ama as they navigate a new life in Glasgow, a city that appears alienating and unpredictable from the outside.
The turbulence of assimilating is tackled with potency and is the film’s biggest asset, shining light on the constant fear that underscores a hostile environment. Grace, who struggles with finding peace in new land, attempts to maintain control by keeping her daughter away from school, counting her steps on the way to and from home, and pushing away anyone willing to help.
This wariness of others is not unjustified – it is hard to live up to expectations when the expectations remain elusive. There is no guidebook to assimilation here.
Grace’s fear of the unknown is countered by an immigrant owner of a hostel who was once in her shoes but has since found a rhythm to life in Glasgow. The immigrant experience shown is not monolithic, the paths being uniquely complicated.
Read more: Glasgow Film Festival – Dozens of premieres showcased at 2023 event
Daughter Ama is more receptive to the world around her, observing the community of high-rise flats from a window. It’s in a sequence of events around her curiosity that she makes friends with a girl from across the way, who becomes a guiding star for her confusion.
The girl takes Ama to a house to show off. It’s not an ostentatious house, being a modest semi-detached new build, yet for Ama it feels extravagant. The dining room décor is pure white, with Ama’s black skin contrasting and sitting out of place visually.
Grace’s protective bubble around Ama extends to their care worker, who Grace treats with complete suspicion. In her reality, the state’s intention is unclear, and that uncertainty is overpowering when the little control she has can be taken by their hands.
While the mother and daughter’s experiences are carried maturely, the hallmarks of a first-time filmmaker are still evident. The romanticisation given to some of the film’s vulnerable moments can feel more like imitation than the natural hand of the director. Similarly, music placement is sometimes used as a tool to inauthentically guide the viewer’s emotions rather than complement the scene effectively. The film simply doesn’t need these tricks.
The script, while well-written, tends to dive into platitudes to reach for a certain reaction at times. Grace outright tells her daughter that “I did not ask for you” – it is a climactic line that the camera sits on, yet feels disingenuous when there are plenty of smaller moments that show a genuine rapport and tension between the two.
And it’s in these smaller moments that the film shines most. The little details that make up a portrait of immigrant life, the different ways Grace’s fear manifests, Ama’s curiosity about her surroundings.
In Between Days, So Yong Kim’s first film, followed a Korean mother and daughter as they face isolation from their new surroundings in Toronto. Similar in plot and themes, In Between Days understands the small moments that make a picture more fully than Girl. Director Onashile has a superb grasp on subtlety and mostly maintains it, but moments stick out that feel less considered.
Girl is a window into the outsider perspective in a setting that will be familiar to its audience, making it an apt choice for the festival’s opening gala. A burgeoning craft is apparent when a city is convincingly portrayed with a constant tension and uneasiness that’s absent from one’s personal impressions.
Onashile has all the tools to create truly wonderful films, there is unlimited potential if she continues to refine her craft and focuses on what really drives the heart at the core of her cinema.
Girl receives a second festival screening at Glasgow Film Theatre on March 2. Tickets here.
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