Film Diary: Gregory's Girl (Bill Forsyth, 1981)

[enitharmon]

Teen flicks make me cringe as a rule. I'm sure this is a lot to do with my own teenage years leaving a lot to be desired. I was a dysfunctional creature who didn't have much of a social life.

That must be why I've held off this film for a quarter of a century despite all the good things I've heard about it. Perhaps I shouldn't have worried - it's setting could have been my school: ten years later and 800 km further north, but hey, nothing much changed. And it feels like a vindication of the shy and awkward.

It hasn't turned my life upside down, but it is infectiously charming and I will no doubt revisit it in years to come.

Comments

[cereswunderkind.livejournal.com]

One of the things I've always liked about this (very likable) film is its setting. It's such a refreshing change to see a shitty housing estate portrayed as non-shitty and actually a perfectly decent place to live.

By all accounts Gregory's Two Girls is teh shite.

[swanofkennet.livejournal.com]

As opposed to Welwyn Garden City, which is generally portrayed as a perfectly decent place to live but which in fact is a shitty housing estate.

But you are quite right, and the other thing is that it portrays the often-villified Cumbernauld youth as perfectly normal teenagers with perfectly normal hangups that any of us could identify with.

[thermalsatsuma.livejournal.com]

Gregory's Girl is a fine, sweet film - it's just a shame that the sequel was so poor. If you are revisiting teen movies of the 80s, then The Breakfast Club is worth a watch. I wonder which of the characters you'd most identify with?

[swanofkennet.livejournal.com]

I didn't even know there was a sequel before last night. I'm not a great fan of sequels and there's been a lot of fine films that had duff sequels, so there's no reason why the shiteness of Gregory's Two Girls should diminish this film in anyway.

Somehow I think an older, more worldly, Gregory would be much less appealing.

As for identification, I managed to identify with both Clare Grogan and John Gordon Sinclair. Something came back to me last night, about my adolescence which always looks so empty in retrospect. Something like the scenario that was set up for Gregory and Susan was actually set up for me when I was sixteen. It didn't come to much but it was something I've tended to gloss over in reflecting on my life.

One thing that was a real revelation to me was just how scrumptious Clare Grogan was - it doesn't quite tally with the bizarre little-girl-punk voice she affected with Altered Images - a band I admired a lot at the time, by the way, as being genuinely original.