About a Girl begins with a silhouette standing in front of a prominent cloudy sky background, you believe the figure to be a girl. As the character begins to sing and dance to the song ‘Stronger’ by Britney Spears you identify that you was right when predicting the figure was that of a girl. As you look at the wide shot of the weather you begin to wonder if the weather is fore shadowing a gloomy event which is about to happen in this girls life. As you listen to the lyrics you begin to realise that they do support that of the shot seen; ‘my loneliness ain’t killing me no more’ is symbolic to the audience that the first shot is showing her isolation and her continued isolation throughout the film. This beginning scene attracts the viewers well enough to keep them captivated to find out what next is going to happen. The captivation of the audience is cleverly done by the director using a strong enigma for the audience to witness.
This is then cut rapidly to a close up of the girl talking in a strong Mancunian accent. This is when it begins to become clear that her monologue is highly relied on by the film for narrating the story. As she carries on walking and talking for a while you see Manchester’s industrial area and a canal, it soon becomes clear that the girl and the canal are the controlling ideas of the short film. In terms of mise en scene the girls costume has clear representation of her being from a working class background and a white British teenager. She wears a white puffa jacket throughout, the colour white representing innocence and gold hoop earrings; an outfit which wouldn’t be thought of as highly fashionable or expensive so yet again reinforcing the idea that she does not come from a high class family. As she continues to walk along the canal she randomly talks about every day things, from quotes of what her parents have said or her dream of becoming a famous pop star, matters that any 13 year old will talk about.
The monologue is interrupted at different times when the director has felt that extra information is needed and a flashback is cleverly used. These range from her singing on the bus with her friends, carrying shopping with her mum and sister, outings with her dad, testing perfumes for her bands ‘image’ and her mum scratching a scratch card; something that represents a dream world that her mum desires, the girls dream of becoming famous may stem from this desire.
We learn that the girl’s parents are now divorced and no longer live together. You begin to realise the girl idolises her father and is seen asking him if she can move in with him, although he does not agree to this she does express that he is interested in her and 'always want to know what I'm up to'. The girl however is mislead and must not truly understand the meaning of somebody being interested in her ‘He takes me to the pub and gets me a coke and a bag of crisps, bless' however we see that she is sat outside a rowdy pub, alone listening to her CD player, this making the audience become sympathetic towards her and leaves a lasting effect on the audience, coincidently ‘stronger’ is playing again. As you see an listen to the girl sing ‘Stronger’ again you begin to think is she trying to persuade herself to do exactly what the song tells her to do ‘You might think that I won't make it on my own but now I'm stronger than yesterday’.
The director obviously wants to leave a clear and almost disturbing message to leave with the audience, the director achieves this with an unexpected event which leaves viewers shocked and keeps them talking over the ending again and again. Quickly at different times during the film you see her carrying a white plastic bag, something you think nothing out of the ordinary, that is until a high angle camera shot reveals her dropping it into the canal; as she throws the bag into the canal it becomes not just not just a controlling idea but however now a main feature of the film. As an underwater shot reveals the plastic bag contained, which we presume to be hers, a dead baby we again presume that she was incapable of looking after him/her so decided to dispose of him/her. You than realise she is influenced by people around her as her mother threw the puppy she found hidden in her sisters room into the canal and now she has thrown the dead baby into the same place. At the beginning of the monologue the girl talks about disposing of dental floss into the toilet, later the dog into the canal and now the dead baby, slowly the importance of the object increases each time.
