White Girl (2016)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Acting as if Thirteen & Kids didn't exist, we have White Girl, a cautionary tale more for us not to watch than our lead. When a female of the Caucasian persuasion comes to the big city for school & career & ends up being a drug dealer for her recently met Hispanic boyfriend, we go from the rancid, biting melodramas that Abel Ferrara once trafficked (sorry for being punny) in to a sci-fi tale of the most ludicrous order. There is some good acting on display especially from the lead, Morgan Saylor, but the plot is so over the top that one wonders if the filmmakers were partaking in that most quoted of Scarface maxims of "getting high on their own supply." Just say 'no' kids.

The entire time I was glued to this film, its pure drama. I cannot recommend this movie enough to my friends. Its a wild adventure of a girl on an extreme summer break, and it all feels too real. I hated this film in the best way because it made me feel something, every dimly lit second of it. Any white girl, aged 16-30 will probably love this film, even if the whole time you're screaming 'OH MY GOD why did she do that' This is a story of a girl who spends a summer thinking with her short term gains in mind, its all fun and games until it hits close to home. God damn I don't wanna give away too much into the story because its so good, but trigger warning, there is rape culture that comes with most dramas about sex and teenage girls with drugs and dealers.

I watched White Girl not knowing what the plot was and not expecting a whole lot since I started the movie by accident around 1:00am. Typical plot, Mid western girl moves to big city where recreational drug use and drinking escalates to heavy drug use/dealing, hard partying, and gets caught up in a situation she seemingly can't get out of.The progressive spiral downward of Saylor's character was done fairly well. Blue's character could have been developed a bit better, and the dynamic between Kelly and Leah was just bizarre. I'd have like to know more on why Leah acted the way she did aside from being young just not giving a damn about what she was doing. I mean, within the first 20 minutes of the film, Leah is asking for weed from a stranger/dealer on the street, has her underwear to her ankles and gives her boss oral in his office her first day of work, has said dealer and his friends in her home a day after they met and has sex in an ally with the dealer the same night.Seriously?To me, Saylor's performance was outstanding as her character's struggles with decision making and drug use escalation was very believable. Noth's final scene with Saylor is difficult to watch, but could be predicted, you just sort of hope it wouldn't. For a young actress she did a nice job in scenes not easy to perform. Overall a decent movie with some good individual performances held back by a script that didn't connect all of the dots and develop it's main characters completely. If viewers can stick it out to the end knowing something crazy will eventually happen it's worth a watch.

It is hard to talk about a film like this, one that is full of tropes, clichés, and ideas that have been done hundreds of times before, to much better effect. Reading the description, I instantly knew what I was in for and what was going to happen in this film. And I wasn't wrong. These tales of youth are dime a dozen, and this doesn't really bring a whole lot of anything new to the table. It has the typical emotional beats one would expect from a film like this. Girl ends up on wrong side of the tracks. Goes crazy, bad things happen, blah blah. I know right now it sounds like I am ragging on this but truth is, I quite enjoyed it. At the very least all that I ask from a film is to give me characters I can care about and become interested in. And this film certainly gave me that. I don't really know why, but the way Leah's downward spiral was portrayed was downright hypnotizing at times.And then there's the ironic ending and final scene, which really elevated this film from a 6 to a 7 for me. Leah's struggle was certainly real, and her journey of addiction that leads to rape among other things, was certainly tumultuous. And yet, nothing really truly devastating ever happened to her. I faulted that to bad writing, but really that's the whole point. After getting out of jail, her boyfriend almost immediately ends up back in custody, for killing in self defense. After all that hard work and trauma Leah subjected herself to, to get him out, and it's all in vain. And Leah herself? Well, nothing happens to her. The final shot is her just sitting in class, life moving on as normal. Which for as simple as it sounds, that scene held A LOT of impact and brought new depth to the whole of the film.I definitely read it as some commentary on white privilege. Her Latino boyfriend ends up in jail facing many years for just mere possession, whereas the ubiquitous white girl not only possesses, but sells copious amounts of drugs, and she never even once has so much as a finger pointed her way, let alone an arrest.Maybe I am reading into it too much, but that scene really changed everything for me. I've seen many films like this before, but this was a particularly arresting tale of an archetypal white person who rejects a life of privilege in favor of a hard knock life. Why? Who knows. This film isn't about why. It's about consequences. Or rather, the lack of consequences some people will/won't have to face, due to status and color of skin.