Mall Girls Makes UK Debut
Katarzyna Roslaniec attends the first UK screening of her debut feature at this year's Birds Eye View Film Festival.
Mall Girls got its UK premiere at this year's Birds Eye View Film Festival, and the creator of the controversial film was on hand to discuss it with a packed crowd.
It's the first full-length feature for Poland's Katarzyna Roslaniec, who developed the film from a short. Mall Girls is based on the phenomenon of teenagers who offer sexual favours in return for expensive clothes and gadgets. The fictional account tells the story of Alicja, a shy and bright 14 year-old who just wants to belong in her new school. A hip trio of streetwise, cocky and glamorous classmates initially pick on Alicja, but soon invite her to join their regular trips to malls and clubs, where they try and find "sponsors" for their expensive tastes.
Speaking at the National Film Theatre, Roslaniec reiterated that it's very important to the girls that money doesn't change hands. "The film makes it clear that the money earned is directly used for goods," she said. "In fact the money isn't mentioned - it is phones, jeans etc. When there is a single financial exchange the contrast in shame is very apparent." Ironically, there was an audible shudder in the theatre when one audience member used the word prostitution in his question. The Warsaw Film graduate spent a long time getting to know real-life mall girls, observing and chatting to them on the Polish equivalent of Facebook. Even though she clearly has a lot of affection for her subjects, Roslaniec remarked: "I'm about ten years older than them, but their attitude to life and their values turned out to be completely different to mine. That's what the film is about. They thought their personal value was measured by the shoes they wear or what kind of boyfriends they've got."
Mall Girls is an unflinching and uncompromising look at teenagers, one that Roslaniec's homeland was not happy about. However, with such natural performances from a mainly inexperienced cast, the film's lasting impression is positive, buoyed by the dark humour on display. Despite the social realism, it's also a technically beautiful piece, making use of the colour that teens instinctively surround themselves with. Every shot is stunning, be it the vibrancy of the cast, or the fascinating grime of the girls' flats. On the night, Roslaniec was joined by her director of photography Witold Stok, who explained that film school graduates are often paired up with experienced DoPs.
With all the technical brilliance on display, Mall Girls still wouldn't have worked without a fantastic cast, and Roslaniec was lucky to find Dagmara Krasowska as queen bee mall girl Milena. "There were no actresses that were 16, and the producers wanted professional actresses as it was cheaper and faster," she explained. "But it took me three months to find the girls and the producer was getting really cross!" Fate stepped in to find her star Anna Karczmarczyk, actually an experienced young actress. "Anna was an actress and was shooting a tv series next door to us," Roslaniec said. "Alicja was meant to be skinny and unattractive, so we could introduce her to the 'real world'. Then we find this gorgeous girl with long curly hair, and I wanted her to play Alicja. I called her back five times because there was something about her. She is a very sensitive girl."
Mall Girls has toured the world's festivals over the last year, with pretty much a unanimous reaction from viewers: adults don't think the film is authentic, but teenagers are fully aware of this world. It's a situation that has a name in Japan - "compensated dating" - but until now had not been discussed in Poland. The horrific outcomes of unwanted pregnancies and the everlasting physical and emotional toil on these young women, driven by an insatiable desire for material goods, is finally a talking point. As Roslaniec says: "They don't see things as heavy. There are many moments that they think are funny, but deep down they aren't. That's the whole point, that's what's tragic."
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