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Critics Consensus: White Girl isn't an easy watch, but it adroitly walks the line between exploitation and drama -- and marks an admirably assured debut for writer-director Elizabeth Wood.
Critic Consensus: White Girl isn't an easy watch, but it adroitly walks the line between exploitation and drama -- and marks an admirably assured debut for writer-director Elizabeth Wood.
All Critics (43) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (30) | Rotten (13)
Frequently difficult to watch, White Girl is the powerful feature debut of a filmmaker with original vision and clear talent -- and a movie that proves a lead actress can possess the gift of transformative performance skills.
Neatly plotted and minimally staged, the movie marks Wood as a talent to watch, but Saylor deserves equal credit for her layered performance as the title character, a confident young woman who crumbles into a confused and frightened child.
First-time writer-director Elizabeth Wood's White Girl sets out to be a Great Gatsby for the 21st century - and perhaps in the process, to depict the orgastic future that Fitzgerald mentioned at the story's end.
Harrowing to the point of being off-putting - but not quite.
"White Girl" announces the arrival of a director of considerable verve, and its choice of style and subject toes a similarly tricky line between leering exploitation and unflinching portraiture.
"White Girl" vividly charts what is at times a violent culture clash. But it is the young lovers' desperate attempt to bridge the gap between their worlds that makes the film so deeply moving.
In "White Girl," you realize that in telling the story of a woman who may overestimate her own power in some respects, Wood, just one film in, is in full command of hers and the result is awesome.
Yes, with its overtly explicit nature this subject matter is bold and has won fans since its Sundance debut, but unfortunately, so many of the directorial choices seemed purely for shock and awe.
Saylor is alternately stiff and extraordinary here, not so great at playing the sober innocent but an ace at the blurry motions of someone who's extremely wasted.
Loosely based on the director's own experience, Wood's viscerally charged film gets under the skin in ways that are hard to shake.
When White Girl isn't dressing up as a morality play, it sharply confronts the social and political anxieties of the most idealistic generation in generations.
Despite errors made, the film's embrace of sexual agency is well, bracing. The memorable ending justifies nearly everything that came before. Contains graphic sex, degradation and sexual violence.
Elizabeth Wood displays an enormous talent behind the cameras of her first feature film, almost placing us right there next to her character and managing what is most difficult: to make us sympathize with someone in a spiraling descent into mad obsession and drug addiction.
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