Moran’s tale of rock critic strikes a chord thanks to young starlet
Glasgow Film Festival How To Build A Girl
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GLASGOW Film Festival ended last night as it began, with a celebration of women in film – and on International Women’s Day, too.
How To Build A Girl is the story of Johanna Morrigan (Beanie Feldstein), an awkward Wolverhampton teenager who reinvents herself as rock critic Dolly Wilde and moves to London to become a meeja star.
It is adapted by journalist Caitlin Moran, pictured inset, from her semiautobiographical bestseller of the same name. How strictly it adheres to the facts is hard to pin down. Johanna gets her start as a critic, for example, by replying to an ad for
“hip young gunslingers” in a newspaper that sounds like the NME.
There, she meets a guy called Tony. This sounds more like the legend of Julie Burchill with a dash of Caitlin Moran (If there turns out to be a fight over this, please let there be tickets).
Playing the Midlands teen is a young actor from
LA, and very good she is, too. Feldstein, outstanding in Booksmart, nails the accent and the attitude, and Paddy Considine, playing her failed rock drummer dad, is a giggle.
For a fair old time the picture tears along, propelled by Feldstein’s energy, Moran and fellow writer John Niven’s one-liners, and the direction of the experienced TV hand Coky Giedroyc (Stella Does Tricks).
By halfway through, however, the one note tone begins to drag. Rather as in Dolly’s kneecapper reviews, a little snarkiness goes a long way.
There is a certain irony, too, that in a feminist coming of age story, the heroine’s mother, (the brilliant Sarah Solemani) should be so sidelined.
Feldstein is a genuine comedy star, with the picture worth seeing for her alone. Funny, surprising, and gallus: a perfect fit with the film festival she closed.