to belong is so strong. There obviously are unhealthy kinds
of friendship groups and there are healthy ones.”
Until the recent arrival of films like Girlhood, Skate
Kitchen and Mustang, the girl gang genre has been
overrun with a fascination with the “unhealthy kinds” of
female friendship where malicious teen maniacs get a kick
out of spreading insecurity (Regina George), perpetuating
jealousy (Nancy Downs) or just resorting to plain old
murder (Veronica Sawyer). Even contemporary films like
Bridesmaids – albeit an older age group – still pivot around
envy and gossip; when Annie bursts into a jealous rage
over Lillian’s friendship with Helen, Lillian retorts “Why
can’t you just be happy for me and then go home and talk
behind my back like a normal person?”
“I think stereotypes are often built on truths aren’t
they,” observes Gavron. “It is just when it becomes the
leading narrative and you forget all the nuance, the subtly
and the complexity, so you are getting one sort of version
and ignoring the other version. There are definitely all
those elements to growing up, but I wouldn’t say it is the
whole picture. It’s also where you throw the focus, so we
were trying to throw focus on the other things that you
don’t see so much.”
In order to create a film that avoided all the stereotypical
pitfalls, Gavron and her team (75 per cent of which were
women) decided to make it in collaboration with the teen
girls that would usually spend Saturday night lining up
along a sofa to watch their favourite movies. The original
storyline of a teenage girl struggling to look after her
younger brother was based on Ikoko’s own experiences,
but the script was developed alongside the casting
workshops where the girls provided a lot of the ideas.
And the girls they found were diverse, which was not
an attempt to debunk the old girl gang trope that friends
need to look the same (or wear matching pink jackets)
but as a consequence of the sort of friendships they
found when casting in East London where cross cultural
relationships were the norm. “They are all speaking
different languages, eating different foods, celebrating
different religious festivals and there is this constant kind
of exchange,” explains Garvon.
This desire to keep Rocks as close to the actual
experiences of young women living in London also
impacted the filming process, shooting in a naturalistic
way and opening and closing the film with phone footage.
“One of the main decisions was to free up the process
so that the girls could really be themselves and we’d not
inhibit them with the way we were shooting. We rolled a
lot of the time, we didn’t say action and we did very, very
long takes. And then because they are always on theiriPhones and they’re all mini filmmakers, we wanted to
incorporate some of that.”
Unlike the girl gangs of yore, the cost of belonging in
Rocks is not risky or destructive but essential and life giving.
It is only when protagonist Shola, or ”Rocks“, removes
herself from the group that she become truly vulnerable.
Gavron’s long takes find the girls relaxing on a London
rooftop and wandering along the Hastings’ seafront, there
is energetic discussion and explosive laughter peppered
with intimate silences, hugging and spontaneous singing.
It is as powerful as the old hallway strut without the terror.
Why don’t we see more films like this? I ask Gavron. “I
think because there aren’t many female filmmakers. It took
a whole female team to make this film. We had to set up
something where we could hear all their voices and also
create a cast made up of people from those communities
so that everybody was a sort of storyteller. And that doesn’t
happen that much.”
Nowadays, my girlfriends and I don’t need to sneak
alcohol around in discarded beauty bottles or argue
with parents over the volume of the TV, but we still like
to settle down to a good film, and – although we love
the old classics – it is refreshing to watch teen female
friendships as we actually experienced them. And here’s
hoping there are plenty more on the way because Garvon
is certain there are many narratives similar to Rocks out
there: “We hope that screening the film to kids of that
age will encourage other stories, because it felt like we
came across so many amazing stories about girls. We
have so many films about the war and boys – why not
more about girls?”“WE HAVE SO
MANY FILMS
ABOUT WAR AND
BOYS – WHY NOT
SOME MORE ABOUT
GIRLS?”
048 The Promising Young Woman Issue