Social realism – A British Genre

About A Girl

Brian Percival’s 2001 social-realist film ‘About A Girl’, set in Manchester’s rural suburbs, is a film about a stereotypically northern teenage girl, whose obsession with Brittney Spears’ lyrics applies to her life a surprisingly devastating amount. Social-realism is a genre famous and somewhat exclusive to the United Kingdom, a few American social-realist ideas coming from the minds of British filmmakers such as Ken Loach (Kes), Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) and Ricky Gervais (The Office). Social-realism films often created to ‘feed’ the audience an ideology that may be left-wing bias, and is something with a typically and purposely small production to create a realistic feel. The conventions include a simple storyline; no hero or one man against an army, as well as basic camera-work with dull colours. The production values tend not to go towards any lighting, with dull, basic effect. In Brian Percival’s film, the film language contributes towards the ideology and the realistic message that he is trying to tell the audience, which I see as a mixture of poor role models, and a social-political message of the living style of up North.

When editing the film, Percival has chosen fast-paced jump cuts as the camera tracks the unnamed Britney fan down the road. This is effective as it represents Percival’s vision of the girl; perhaps that she is on drugs or drunk. It could also hint at the documentary style, with all the cuts of her speaking perhaps connoting the different takes in the documentary, with the unnamed girl not being able to complete a single take because of her inability to concentrate due to poor up-bringing or maybe addiction. This contributes towards Percival’s social-realism ideology, in which the sharp jump cuts reflect the poor and unhealthy living style of the midlands.

The choice of costume for our unnamed girl is chosen well in production, with her tracksuit and hoop earrings reflecting her cheap lifestyle (her father and mother wearing also cheap clothing in their brief scenes). This is Percival feeding the audience his message that the midlands are a very poor place in Europe,

along with introducing the idea of role models through the mum and dad’s scruffy attire.

Furthermore, the scenery and set design was chosen well by Percival. Such props and additional decoration to the set such as graffiti and shopping trollies in the river were not something added by the crew but already there; something Percival decided to do on purpose to make his ideology stronger. The choice of setting by

Percival is to create a left-wing ideology, with the focus on a very scatty area of North Manchester showing off to the viewer the poor living style they live in, in an attempt to show that people like the young girl in ‘About A Girl’ need help. The lack of lighting or colour from the film crew shows Percival’s willingness to make the film realistic. The dull colours and grey sky contribute to the miserable tone, while Percival hasn’t done anything in terms of production to influence this. The purpose of lighting and colour and other mise-en-scene production elements not being used in the film contributes to the social-realism genre; the director wanting to make the film as believable as possible to support his left-wing ideology.

The camera-work throughout ‘About A Girl’ is very documentary-style. The handheld camera not only mirrors the girl’s unstable lifestyle, but also

represents the social-realism genre; the camera tracking the girl handheld to make the viewer believe it’s realistic because of the documentary-style. The actress is told to sometimes look at the camera to enhance this documentary-style that Percival looks for, in order to make it realistic.

The choice of soundtrack for this short film is something that Percival has written in mind, and chosen as a kind of double entrende. The denotation of the girl listening to Brittney Spears is simply that she is a fan, though the lyrics ‘baby, baby’ ‘I’ve had enough’ and ‘something isn’t right’ connote the end of the film, in which she dumps her baby in the river.