Pi@LFF: Rocks
Source: image.net
Pi@LFF is a series of reviews made by the Pi Culture team attending the 2019 BFI London Film Festival. In this article, Matilda Singer reviews Sarah Gavron’s soul-affirming drama.
Between Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird and Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, we’re finally spoilt for choice with nuanced coming-of-age dramas for young women. But it turns out that Sarah Gavron’s Rocks, which premiered last week at the London Film Festival, is the one city kids so desperately needed.
In the opening sequence, fifteen-year-old Olushola (Rocks, to everyone who matters) comes home from school not to find tea on the table, but to an envelope with an apologetic letter and some spending money. Mum’s gone. Rocks (Bukky Bakray) responds with tenacity – her nickname was born out of defending her best friend against bullies, after all. Keeping the parental absence under wraps, she assumes the role of carer for herself and her little brother.
The latter, played by the delightful D’Angelou Osei Kissiedu, is endearing to the point of scene-stealing. Take his version of the Lord’s prayer: “Our Father, he’s up in heaven”. And when there isn’t enough money to pay the electricity bill: “I could do a sponsored walk,” suggests seven-year-old Emmanuel. They’re lines that only a child can deliver sincerely, and they tumble out his mouth with the spontaneity of a trained actor.
The entire feature carries this candidness – it could almost have been shot as a documentary. In fact, for most of the cast it’s their first time on screen; they were scouted before a single line was written, so that screenwriters Claire Wilson and Theresa Ikoko could build up a story around the young actors. From the hip-hop soundtrack to the moments shot on an iPhone lens, Rocks is a collaboration between those on each side of the camera. The girls even improvised dialogue, “so they could own it,” explains director Sarah Gavron. The bond that emerges between them – seen in mannerisms as they chatter, and fluid movements as they dance on Hackney rooftops – certainly suggests true friendship. Befitting of the setting, Rocks’ gang is a mix of Polish Gypsy, Somalian, Nigerian, White British. This is inner-city girlhood.
Sadly, real girlhood means real issues: mental illness, racism, and poverty. No fifteen-year-old should have to be this tough, but hundreds in the city are put in the same position as Rocks and forced to grow up too soon. The juxtaposition of her ditching school to find work as her peer group sit in art class learning about Picasso lays it bare: the curriculum is useless when there isn’t money to put food on the table, and you’re trying to evade a welfare system that separates siblings. When they’re eventually taken into care, Emmanuel’s primal howl cuts right through the screen to the heart of the audience.
Yet these ninety-three minutes are filled with ultimately joyful moments. I laughed out loud watching a student walk into school with bug-eye sunglasses like she’s a celebrity evading paparazzi; I laughed more furtively at the History class scene. Hitler? “Man needs to fix up”.
Rocks hums with life – a vibrancy that nods to the real-life communities of East London. It’s a vulnerable, honest, bright, and sensitive celebration of the young women that inhabit our city.