My favourite film of 2014 being Boyhood, I was naturally curious to see 2014's Girlhood. Actually, Girlhood- which comes from France- isn't meant to be the feminine equivalent of Boyhood. It doesn't have the same scope and clearly wasn't filmed over 12 years. It deals with a teenage girl who, failing to graduate to high school, drops out of vocational school to join a gang.

It's not as rough as you would expect for the first half of the film- what we have is an extended view of girls who like clothes, jewelry, singing Diamonds and even miniature golf. It's in the second half when we see a more serious fight (our protagonist, "Vic," uses a knife to remove another girl's bra) and then sex, and insults about being a slut. Instead of the gang being portrayed as a truly destructive force, it's actually more of a sisterhood whose members discourage Vic from descending deeper into criminality.

We certainly see Vic's motivations for joining the gang- she has little future, and is told it's too late for her. Not encouraging. Her home life is rough, too. I can't say I was blown away by Girlhood, but it's a believable drama with a sympathetic protagonist.

All-girl "gangs" may offer female teenagers a safe space to experiment with the trappings of womanhood - a step-up from childhood, but a transitional stage nonetheless. This social dynamic is explored in 'Girlhood', but against the backdrop of an impoverished, ethnic minority community in Paris, where every choice made has wider repercussions for life. Unfortunately, the film feels disjointed, in part because it doesn't seem to know whether it wants to celebrate this "girlhood", or look on aghast; of course real life isn't black and white, but the film seems to alternate between portraying these two extremes, instead of managing to paint a subtler shade. Beyond the fact that life's hard and people (and especially men) are hard as well, I didn't take too much away from this film.

French director Céline Sciamma's new film is called "Girlhood," probably named that way in English to capitalize on last year's similar moniker, "Boyhood." But in French, it's translated as "Girl Gang," which to my ears is a more appropriate title.

Citing the lack of French films dealing with black people, Sciamma, who is white, decided to hang out with some French-African teenagers to learn more about their culture and perhaps fashion a film based on her experiences. The resulting product features non-professional actors culled from what is usually referred to in the US as "the projects," rows of drab apartment buildings in a lower socio-economic section of the city.

The opening scene is most telling as Sciamma depicts a group of high school girls playing American style football. As they walk home and continually pass by groups of loud, hostile-acting males, they gradually peel off, finally leaving us with the film's protagonist, Marieme, a 16 year old teenager who later refers to herself as "Vic" (for Victory).

Marieme's mother is too busy working to pay much attention to the teenager's needs and her brother is a macho creep who occasionally physically abuses her. After she fails to get into college because of poor grades (and faced with the prospect of attending a vocational school instead),Marieme develops a crush on a boy who is friends with a gang of three girls—she soon falls in with the group and gradually is transformed from a shy teenager to an aggressive rebel.

The leader of the three is Lady, whom the other girls look up to. Sciamma chronicles the misadventures of the girl gang as they traipse around Paris (mainly in shopping malls),shoplifting, extorting money from other girls and acting as obnoxiously as they can. Sciamma appears to take no stand on their behavior, merely depicting their loutish shenanigans as typical of wayward, rebellious teenagers.

The main plot involves Lady's fall from grace after she is beaten up in a fight with a girl from a rival gang before a fairly large group of people. Lady retreats from public review after her father forbids her to pursue further rebelliousness activities. Marieme takes up the group's mantle when she in turn beats up the teenager who defeated Lady.

Sciamma's gritty depiction of the activities of the girl gang and their rivals works well--akin to some of the more interesting cinema verité efforts here in the US. Not only does she capture their anti-social side with cogent verisimilitude but also highlights the teenagers' sense of camaraderie (the highlight being the group dancing to Rihanna's song "Diamaonds").

Unfortunately, Sciamma's resolution to Marieme's story is not completely satisfactory. Marieme eventually parts with the rest of her group and begins working for a local drug dealer, Abou. At one point we see her disguising herself as a boy, perhaps to avoid being hit upon by rapacious males who are part of Abou's group. Later, Abou does just that at a party and Marieme declares she's through working for him. Marieme's boyfriend's suggestion that they get married falls on deaf ears and the aimless former gang leader is rebuffed after she tries to buzz herself into the family apartment.

What are we supposed to conclude about Marieme's fate? Is she the victim of a society that favors the upper middle-class and the rich? Is it all racial—that because she's black, she can't get ahead? Or is it Marieme's own choices that stymie her? Perhaps she could have gone to vocational school instead of falling in with her girl gang rebels. Sciamma again perhaps takes no sides but her tale feels incomplete— perhaps we'll have to wait for the sequel to find out what happened to her.