‘Girls Town’ Explores Friendship at Crossroads

Jim McKay’s remarkable “Girls Town” begins with a shocking incident that reverberates throughout the film as three fast friends are heading toward the conclusion of their senior year in high school.

This event acts as a depth charge to these friends (Lili Taylor, Bruklin Harris and Anna Grace), shaking them up in unexpected ways just as they’re facing leaving their familiar and relatively secure world. (The film takes place in an unidentified Eastern city; it was shot mainly in Hackensack, N.J.)

“Girls Town” is a serious film, even demanding in the complexity of its people and their relationships, yet it gets a steady stream of laughs. Truly, “Girls Town,” which won the Filmmakers’ Trophy and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance, captures the human comedy.

Its unique denseness and richness grew out of an improvisational workshop that McKay, a documentarian in his fictional film debut, conducted with his cast over a two-year period. Along with McKay and writer Denise Casano, his three key actresses wound up being credited with writing the script.

The result is that the rhythm of the actors’ dialogue and their interactions with one another key the tempo of the film, which in turns creates a sense of eavesdropping on life that few films achieve. At the same time there’s never anything awkward or uneven about the picture (gracefully photographed by Russell Fine), which is unusual for a film of such seeming spontaneity that was shot in 12 days on a low, low budget. Complementing the film’s mercurial moods is a score by Guru that incorporates various rap numbers.

Stunned by bad news, Taylor’s Patti, Harris’ Angela and Grace’s Emma are struck by the realization that maybe they don’t know one another as well as they thought they did and, beyond this, that maybe they don’t know themselves so completely either.

The glamorous, edgy Angela is emphatically determined to be her own person--and writes poetry to be read only by herself. Emma is heading toward Columbia with the idea of becoming a journalist, while Patti, perennially held back from graduation, already has a baby, presumably out of wedlock. She would love to be a photographer, is a whiz in car shop but wonders what garage would hire a female auto mechanic.

In the thrall of shock the girls open up to one another as never before. They stir up so much anger in one another that they become compelled to work it out in ways that are destructive though relatively harmless. It is a measure of the power of this picture that it gets you not only to understand but even to accept such acts, dead-set as you may be against even the pettiest vandalism no matter what the provocation.

The point is that the film depicts with utter conviction a world in which girls in the process of becoming women have little opportunity to assert themselves or to be understood when they’re most in need of support.

The improvisational method with which this film evolved allows its actors to show us so many sides to their people, so much volatility, that it can take a while for its key figures to involve us. But snare us Taylor, Harris and Grace most surely do. Their characters often give the males in their lives a hard time, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not, especially in the case of Emma’s sweet-natured boyfriend (Guillermo Diaz, barely recognizable as the transvestite La Miranda of “Stonewall”), perplexed and hurt by her angry mood.

You can become so absorbed by the girls and so concerned for their destinies that you may be caught up short in being reminded, near the end of the movie, that it’s only weeks before graduation. So differing are their backgrounds and their goals that you’re left with the poignant feeling that never again will they ever feel so close to one another--and that down deep, they know it, too.

* MPAA rating: R, for pervasive strong language and for drug use. Times guidelines: The film has much strong language.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

‘Girls Town’

Lili Taylor: Patti

Bruklin Harris: Angela

Anna Grace: Emma

David Bailey: Rollins

An October Films presentation of a C-Hundred Film Corp. and Boomer Pictures production. Director Jim McKay. Producer Laura Zalaznick. Screenplay by McKay, Denise Casano, Anna Grace, Bruklin Harris, Lili Taylor. Cinematographer Russell Fine. Editors McKay, Alex Hall. Costumes Carolyn Grifel. Music Guru. Production designer David Doernberg. Art director Melissa P. Lohman. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 848-3500; the Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., (310) 394-9741; and the Town Center 4, Bristol and Anton, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, (714) 751-4184.