People born in 1979 or 1980 or even 1981, 1982 or 1983 in Spain lived in a country which made an effort to be seen as "modern", but it had inside a strong contrast between this modernity and the Spanish traditions of the previous decades.
Plot summary
In spring 1992 in the city of Zaragoza (province of Zaragoza, autonomous community's capital of Aragón in northeastern Spain),11-year-old Celia lives with her 30-year-old widowed mother Adela, attends a Catholic school, and helps Adela with the cooking and housework. Her peaceful world changes when new student Brisa arrives from Barcelona (Catalonia's capital). Curious, restless and exciting, Brisa introduces quiet, friendly Celia to modern music bands that she doesn't know, at the same time she befriends another classmate, Cristina, and her older sister Clara. Despite the modernity of a Spain which in that year was the focus of attention as European Cultural Capital, the Expo '92 in Seville, and the Olympic Games in Barcelona, Celia's life is kept conservative and repressive not only by the nuns but also by working-class, illiterate Adela, who refuses to talk about Celia's father and worries about her own aging father but is unable to visit him because she was banished from her birth village for being an unwed mother. Celia spends her time with the girls playing with makeup, testing alcohol and cigarettes, dancing in discotheques at weekends, and discovering that she's despised at school for not having a father like the rest of the girls do. She feels like a stranger and searches for her identity and her place in the world. "The Girls" is the portray of a generation as unique as the time they lived.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
1980
A good old vs new story.
This film isn't just another coming-of-age story: It depicts with a naturalism the major contrast of 90s Spain. This contrast was between the more relaxed morality that the media wanted to project and the conservative stance of the Cathoilic Church and rural areas. The path to adolescense is well told, with all the shananigans and truth revelations it entails. The direction is almost Bressonian in its minimalism and the music is exclusively from the era. Overall, a stellar movie.
Terribly Overrated
The movie is about a few girls studying in a Catholic School in Spain , but frankly it's dumb, slow-paced and without interest.
I bravery resisted throughout the whole movie without turning off the TV , but in the end I regretted it.
The only feeling I got in the end was hating the nuns more than I already do, if that's possible.