What’s it All About?
A teenager living with her working-class family on a council estate in Wolverhampton, England, grows up to become a popular but conflicted music journalist.
Review
How to Build a Girl is Coky Giedroyc’s quirky coming-of-age tale about an aspiring teenage writer in Wolverhampton. It is based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Caitlin Moran, an award-winning English journalist, author, and broadcaster. I wish I liked this. I really wanted to like this.
Told from her point-of-view with the occasional voiceover, our protagonist is sixteen-year-old Johanna, played by Ladybird and Booksmart’s Beanie Feldstein (to give credit where it’s due, her Wolverhampton accent isn’t bad). She is a larger than life creative girl with a desire to make her voice heard, no matter what it takes.
Her family life is chaotic: her large family share a tiny council house where she shares a room with her teenage brother Krissy (Laurie Kynaston), separated by doors in the middle of the room, her father (the wonderful Paddy Considine) is an optimistic musician stuck in working-class life, and her mother (Sarah Solemani) is going through postpartum depression after the unexpected birth of twins at 38. There is also another brother, but we don’t see much of him.
Johanna thinks she’s finally got a chance to showcase her talent when she wins a competition to read her poetry on live TV. As expected, it does not go well. Johanna is so nervous that she oversteps her boundaries with the host and starts singing the Scooby-Doo theme, for which she is mercilessly mocked for the next day by her schoolmates.
Her brother Krissy suggests she apply for a rock critic job-based in London, despite the fact that Johanna’s rock stars are more of the classical variety. She has a wall of her room dedicated to her literary and academic heroes whom she regularly talks to, including the Brontes, Jo March, Freud, Marx, and Elizabeth Taylor (this representation of Johanna’s rich inner-world is one of the film’s strength’s).
Johanna eventually gets the job and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde, a red-haired, corset-wearing critic, but after her authentic writing voice is mocked and rejected by her posh-boy co-workers, Johanna believes that she must become a ‘bitch’ in order to have a successful writing career. Her writing becomes more about mocking the bands than genuine criticism, and all the while she is falling in love with sensitive rock star John Kite (played by Alfie Allen, who I’m normally not a fan of but he fits this character really well).
Predictably, Johanna learns that being a ‘bitch’ is not the best way to go about things and when she realises that her posh co-workers do not respect her because of where she comes from – she overhears one she’s sleeping with say that he has a thing for “mental girls from council estates” and that he “takes something from the dirt” and helps it grow, gross – Johanna eventually resorts back to her authentic self and makes amends for the wrongs she done.
Overall, not a bad wee film. It’s predictable in that it’s a coming-of-age story where we know that the less-than-popular protagonist is going to become someone they’re not, slowly realise that’s not who they want to be, and then go on this huge, life-changing journey. I respect it in that sense, and it works well formulaically.
But I couldn’t stand Johanna as a character. That isn’t to say that Beanie Feldstein’s performance isn’t fantastic because it is, she plays Johanna perfectly, but I hated her. Initially I related – bookish, small-town girl from a council estate who wants to be a writer (oh, hello me) – but Johanna was so in your face and cringey that I kept getting second-hand embarrassment from watching her.
I appreciated her in the sense that she manages to get her foot in the door and stay in a misogynistic work environment despite constant mocking, because, as a poster tells her, “that room needs girls like you”, but her decision to lose her real self and become a ‘bitch’ just to get ahead didn’t sit right with me. Again, she’s sixteen, I know, I know, but I wouldn’t have done that in her position.
She completely sold herself out, and to make it worse, she then develops a superiority complex! She becomes a major earner in her household and does not let her parents forget it, and she does not do it gracefully or respectfully; she demands praise and thanks for it. No. Go away, Johanna.
It’s evident that she’s resentful and embarrassed of her upbringing and I although I found that annoying, I kind of get it, and maybe if I were a teenager watching this, instead of a 24-year-old, I would’ve related to it more. Maybe How to Build a Girl is not aimed at someone like me.
I did like the other characters a lot more than Johanna (aside from the posh boys at the magazine, they just made me angry). Her mum is strong, and Johanna does come to realise this after she grows out of her ‘resentful of the attention mum is giving the new babies’ phase, her dad is wonderfully optimistic, enthusiastic and supportive of his entire family, and Johanna’s relationship with her brother Krissy felt genuine, and was funny and a pleasure to watch (although I wish she hadn’t shared her sexual exploits in such detail with him, but that’s probably just me being prudish).
I do like where the film ended. Having fallen into a depressive cycle where she commits self-harm and ends up in hospital, Johanna writes about her experience in an article titled “Too old for the children’s ward, too young for the adult’s ward: why sixteen is the worst age to self-harm”.
As someone who experienced this first-hand and had friends do similar, it was refreshing to see such a candid and non-judgemental representation of it on screen. Johanna writing about her experience gets her a job at a decent magazine with other respectful and intelligent women – anyone else wants to be Emma Thompson? – and it was lovely to see her expressive and raw honesty get her to a place where she could thrive and be safe.
Final Thoughts
A mediocre coming-of-age film with a star who outshines the material in every way imaginable.
