“I don’t want to die,” Ginger (Elle Fanning) says at one point in this quietly-insightful film. “I want to grow up and do things.” What Fanning is “growing up” to do here is to deliver a performance that’s knowing, captivating, pitch-perfect beyond her years. She brings the innocence of a child into the insanities of an adult world. In London, 17-year-olds Ginger and Rosa (Alice Englert) have been friends since they were born in the same hospital, on the same day.
But it’s 1962, and the possibility of nuclear war threatens to annihilate everything. Ginger is terrified; Rosa goes along, but her heart is not in it. She wants “…to find true love that lasts forever, if there is a forever…” The girls are drifting apart as Director Sally Potter takes their story deep, delivering a movie filled with painful sensitivity, with real fears, with human understanding. The result is a demonstration of what independent movies do so well – fill our hearts with people we care for and leave us richer for having shared their experiences. With the amazing talent of Elle Fanning, Sally Potter has created an extraordinary movie.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 