Critic Reviews
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Rick Groen, Globe and Mail
Coming from anyone else, Ginger & Rosa would be a sensitive if predictable coming-of-age tale set in the mists of the distant past. But coming from writer-director Sally Potter, it's a major surprise.
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Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune
A near-flawless film, beautifully shot and cut, excitingly performed and deeply felt.
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Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
Fanning is nearly perfect as Ginger navigates choppier waters than most teens have to. There is not a false note in her performance; no matter how melodramatic things become, everything about Ginger remains genuine.
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Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
Elle Fanning is scary. Scarily good.
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Linda Barnard, Toronto Star
In all respects, this is the completely captivating Fanning's picture.
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Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post
What hurt, nuanced terror and exhilaration there is in Sally Potter's beautiful coming-of-age drama Ginger & Rosa.
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Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
...probably Potter's most accessible movie to date, but the script is perhaps nothing special ...
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John Beifuss, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Nuclear anxiety becomes a distraction from teenage pressures and a projection of potentially explosive emotional distress in this beautifully acted character drama.
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Mike Scott, Times-Picayune
The gifted Elle Fanning turns in an extraordinary performance, although Sally Potter's film is otherwise built on a flimsy, soap-opera story.
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Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Assured but bleak art-house girl's coming-of-age film that combines politics and personal matters.
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Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing
Despite some narrative missteps, Ginger & Rosa should be seen simply for Fanning's exceptional performance, the sort of revelatory turn that makes us feel as if the next generation of film is in capable hands.
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Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle
Fanning -- a startlingly alert and microemotive young actress -- breathes real feeling into the part, while the jazz soundtrack (John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Sidney Bechet) rouses this sensitive film from its drowsier inclinations.
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Nora Lee Mandel, Film-Forward.com
Fanning heartbreakingly expresses hurt with seemingly with every fiber of her being. Her family implodes as much as the world seems about to during those 13 days in October.
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Rob Thomas, Capital Times (Madison, WI)
Fanning brings such a groundedness and authenticity to the film's central role that you stick with her every step of the way.
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Jeff Beck, Examiner.com
"Ginger & Rosa" is another one of those films that feels like it's attempting to cover too much, and by doing so, ends up spreading itself rather thin across all of the areas it tries to encompass.
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Duane Dudek, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Even seemingly ordinary scenes of girlfriends bonding - ironing hair, wearing jeans in the bathtub to shrink them, hitchhiking - are fraught with the sense of the external forces that will divide them.
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Sarah Boslaugh, PopMatters
The great gift of Ginger & Rosa is Potter's willingness to let her camera observe these gifted young actresses without judgment, and to create the illusion of ordinary life unfolding before your eyes.
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Todd Jorgenson, Cinemalogue.com
Without turning sentimental or heavy-handed, Potter strikes a nice balance between the more intimate character moments and the broader political context, and Fanning is terrific as the girl caught in the middle.
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Mathew DeKinder, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Ginger's teen angst could have easily become mopey or self-righteous, but Fanning stays true to the heart of her character even as her world is crumbling around her.
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Katherine Monk, Canada.com
It's not an easy voyage, but it is memorable thanks to the careful work of the outstanding ensemble cast and the nuanced presence of Fanning as the confused, but creatively gifted Ginger.
Read all 21 critic reviews
Featured Audience Ratings
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Ginger & Rosa is a challenging experience to sit through and not because it is a powerful portrait of a two friends it should be. Ginger & Rosa is a film that goes far too many directions and has too many ideas to actually work.
Without the central perfromance of Elle Fanning… More
Ginger & Rosa is a challenging experience to sit through and not because it is a powerful portrait of a two friends it should be. Ginger & Rosa is a film that goes far too many directions and has too many ideas to actually work.
Without the central perfromance of Elle Fanning this film would be a complete mess. It is a mess as it is but Fanning at least anchors some of the film's themes and does a very good job here. I would not hesitate to call fanning as a one of the most talented actors of her generation. Her ablities as an actor are outstandind. That said it is even more sad to see how sloppily put together material she is given here.
I quite cannot figure out what director Sally Potter is trying to achieve or say here. At times this film seems to be a political story and at times it resembles more of an pure domestic melodrama. There are great actors like Alessandro Nivola and Annette Bening among the cast here but their contribution is not enough and nothing saves this film from sinking under it's bad screenplay.
There is quite emotionally powerful climax here but that all comes way too late in the film and leaves things just unresolved. If Potter would extend some of her ideas more and give more time to her characters and all the subplots then this could have turned out to be better film, but now it is just mostly mess without clear direction or anything worth to say.
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As corny as this may sound, Ginger(Elle Fanning) and Rosa(Alice Englert) are well-nigh impossible to separate since before they were born when their respective mothers(Christina Hendricks & Jodhi May) met in a maternity ward in 1945. Together, they confront their nuclear fears in… More
As corny as this may sound, Ginger(Elle Fanning) and Rosa(Alice Englert) are well-nigh impossible to separate since before they were born when their respective mothers(Christina Hendricks & Jodhi May) met in a maternity ward in 1945. Together, they confront their nuclear fears in different ways. Ginger takes to protests and meetings while Rosa finds religion.
While Rosa has never really known her father, Ginger has Roland(Alessandro Nivola) as her father, as he prefers to be known to her, when he is not sleeping elsewhere which includes his boat. As Roland puts it, he refused to enter the military during World War II, and was jailed for his beliefs, the worst part being in solitary, but is too self-righteous to wonder why people did not act differently than he did.
Ever since her first feature, the classic "Orlando," Sally Potter's films have sadly been a prime case of diminishing returns. With her latest, the evocative, yet flawed "Ginger & Rosa" which moves to its own syncopated rhythm to match the jazz records on the soundtrack, she arrests that trend somewhat by thoughtfully exploring the connection between the personal and the political while not being the first person to conflate nuclear family and nuclear explosions. By having another red-headed protagonist who seeks to be a poet, Potter is saying there is nothing greater to fear than being alone at a time in 1962 when the world was facing nuclear annihilation, which concerned citizens responded with protests in England.
Note to self: get a jazz band for the next protest.
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It seems while Dakota Fanning was in the U.K filming the detestable "Now is Good", her much more talented little sister, Elle, was in the same country shooting Sally Potter's latest. It's a cliched 1960's coming of age tale which mixes the plots of "The… More
It seems while Dakota Fanning was in the U.K filming the detestable "Now is Good", her much more talented little sister, Elle, was in the same country shooting Sally Potter's latest. It's a cliched 1960's coming of age tale which mixes the plots of "The Squid & the Whale" and this year's "Albatross" but lacks the charm of either. In recent years we've become used to seeing American movies starring Brits but here it's a reversal with most of the lead roles played by Americans. Robbie Ryan's cinematography and Fanning's performance are both commendable but otherwise there's little of interest on display.
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