ABSTRACT
Bande de Filles, or Girlhood, to use the film’s English language title, is a film that balances the singular experience of its characters, with a general comment on the state of girlhood in contemporary France. Released in 2014 as part of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the film was both widely praised for its aesthetic innovation, and often compared to its near contemporary, Richard Linklater’s film Boyhood. In turn, the film was often critiqued for its politics of representation. Bande de Filles’ portrayal of black teenage girls, and the title’s suggestion that this group might represent girlhood in aggregate, calls into question the assumed whiteness in existing accounts of female adolescence. Bande de Filles draws from, and provides its own take on, conventions of the Hollywood teen movie, for which Céline Sciamma, the film’s director, demonstrates a clear appreciation. The success of Bande de Filles also owes much to the high proportion of female filmmakers in the French film industry, and the resulting frequency of female-centred genre films in France.
