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A Midwestern girl comes to New York for college and finds herself experiencing far more than she probably originally planned.
Trigger Warning(s): Rape
Review (with Spoilers)
Noted Actor(s)
Leah (Morgan Saylor) | Blue (Brian ‘Sene’ Marc) | Katie (India Menuez)
Storyline
What happens when a Midwestern girl, Leah, fresh to NY for her sophomore year of college, meets a local dealer with grand ambitions named Blue? Well, you get an HBO styled movie featuring sex, drugs, and ultimately violence. The type which leaves the white girl, who initiated everything, looking like the victim. Meanwhile, we watch her brown special friend deal with the aftermath of playing with someone who didn’t take the lifestyle and industry he is in seriously.
Things To Note | Questions Left Unanswered
How in the world did she, Leah, have that much sex, with various partners, without a condom, and didn’t get anything from a STD to a pregnancy scare?
Highlights
It Started Good
I don’t know how to fully express it, but things started off good. Leah was this girl from the Midwest who perhaps didn’t understand the social etiquette of her new Ridgewood neighborhood, if not New York in general. So, with that, she wasn’t afraid to experiment with certain people and things. Hence why she walked right up to dealers across the street and allowed one of them, Blue, to come into her life. But while, at first, there was this intrigue of when it seemed she was in control, she had the upper hand, once her game became her dealing with someone’s actual life that she potentially ruined, so was lost what made this movie seem good.
On The Fence
HBO Styled Depth & Drama
When it comes to branding, HBO (who doesn’t have an association with this movie) I think consistently allows their creators to use sex and drugs to mask underdeveloped characters and weak stories. Essentially, things become more about shock value through passionate sex and jaw-dropping violence to keep you hooked. That is essentially what you get with White Girl.
Leah’s quest to be free after living in Oklahoma City leads you not so much on a journey of self-discovery, or even growth, but one sensationalist act after another. Be it watching her, and various other people, do lines of drugs, one after another. Loads of sex. Some with friends, romantic partners, and of course rape for when a movie starts to get really dull and you think your audience is getting complacent, you have to throw in someone breaking the lead’s trust. Thus throwing the viewer into disarray as they try to figure why said character crossed that line.
Yet, none of that is ever explained. In fact, all we know, in total, is Leah is a writing and media arts major. We don’t know why she decided to become one, what she wants to do with her life, or even why she acts as rash as she does. In a way, with the name drop of a Midwestern city, it is like you are to naturally assume she is a small town girl coming to the big apple and letting her freak flag fly. Which, to me, was kind of lazy in terms of storytelling.
For while it is slightly hinted by Katie that maybe Leah was like this before they came to New York to be roommates for school, it isn’t made official. So, among watching Leah spend time with Blue, try to help Blue out of a situation she set in motion, and then see her struggle to do so, it is like we barely get to know this person before us. She is just a girl, one easily replaceable, going through a lot of messed up stuff.
Overall: Mixed (Home Viewing)
This is the type of film in which you have to clap it up for the marketing department. They made something so simple, which pretty much is like a softcore porn with a bit more focus on story, seem like it could really be something more. They get props for that. However, to whoever reads this, know this film isn’t worth getting excited about. Not one of the actors really shine and while it perhaps had potential at first, that light got blown out as soon as Saylor was forced to bear the weight of the movie on her shoulders.
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