God Help The Girl - response

God Help The Girl is a musical that came to my attention because Stuart Murdoch, of Belle & Sebastian, wrote and directed it. Belle & Sebastian are labelled as an indie-pop band and the indie-pop influences and twists are constant throughout this quirky musical.

I may or may not have watched this film three times within 24 hours... It's not unusual for me to rewatch films regularly, but there was just something very captivating about God Help The Girl - like a certain feeling of mystery that left me wanting to explore the film a little bit more.

God Help The Girl has moments of comedy and is generally very charming but, unbeknownst to me initially, it's actually quite dark and heavy in subject matter. Eve, the protagonist, suffers from anorexia but also has a vaguely nonchalant love for singing. The film drifts with Eve as she meets fellow musicians and good friends, James and Cassie. There is a love interest, of course, but it has a subtle and indirect focus and Eve is torn between her awkward friend James and her German "dream boy" (I'll Have To Dance With Cassie).

At first, God Help The Girl's musical numbers and voiceover effects perplexed me but I've grown to love them and see how they add to the charm. The voiceover effects also echo that of radio presenters which is a nice little music-related decoration to the film. God Help The Girl also has a certain retro feel to it through the cinematography and some of the outfits to the point where the time period is still irrelevant and ambiguous even when technology from this decade features in the scene.

All in all, God Help The Girl is a charming, quirky little musical film and definitely worth a watch - but it deserves two or three in order to really appreciate it!

Chungking Express (1994) - response

Chungking Express is a very interesting film to watch in regards to style, although I found it slightly difficult to follow at times (mainly during the first narrative). That being said, each character in the film is so complex and is explored in such depth that it makes a really intriguing watch.
I feel that there's a definite similarity between the first cop (cop 223) and the character of Oliver Tate from Submarine. They both have a certain way of being quite melodramatic and poetic and this actually reinforced the slightly more pathetic characteristics of cop 223. Leading on from this, the gender representation in Chungking Express was interesting - whilst the male characters had a tendency to be quite weak and submissive, the female characters assumed a lot more strength and conviction.
Chungking Express can be applauded for how well it creates a sense of a really claustrophobic urban environment and the focus on the characters' solitude highlights the loneliness and isolation that can occur in bustling cities.