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Feb 06, 2015Nursebob rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Ginger and Rosa’s mothers gave birth to them in a London hospital just as The Bomb was being dropping on Hiroshima. Seventeen years later, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the effects of that explosion are still being felt by Ginger (a phenomenal Elle Fanning) who has become a neurotic activist convinced that the world will end tomorrow. Rosa, on the other hand, has become a bohemian who still believes in “eternal love” even as she bums free cigarettes and the occasional snog from willing strangers. Yet the two are the best of friends, sharing a free-spirited delinquency much to the consternation of Ginger’s frustrated artist mother and the delight of Roland, her anarchist father who still nurses the cross he acquired when he was jailed for being a conscientious objector. But when Rosa’s quest for love everlasting goes too far a rift develops between the girls causing Ginger to contemplate mushroom clouds of a different variety. There is some psychological meat to this teen drama especially when Ginger’s paranoia about global destruction is taken for the emotional metaphor it’s clearly meant to be. The carefree relationship between the two friends is realistically portrayed making the final fireworks and resolutions all the more believable. But there is a lack of momentum as the story gets bogged down in a series of bombastic exchanges whether it’s Ginger going off the rails with her “Ban the Bomb” rhetoric, mom’s bleeding martyr lamentations, or dad’s pretentious prattle on freedom from societal conventions which he selfishly uses to justify some unjustifiable behaviour. Even a surprise cameo by Annette Bening as a raspy-voiced American agitator amounts to little more than liberal clichés and feminist musings. Only Ginger’s gay godfather Mark (Timothy Spall) seems to have any practical sense about him and he’s relegated to a supporting character. Unevenly edited with a script that wavers between family drama and adolescent soap, but the sense of teenage angst—a cliché in itself—set against a backdrop of civil unrest is handled with aplomb.