“White Girl”

The Pub Philosopher reviews “White Girl”, Abi Morgan’s gritty urban drama about typical Yorkshire folk.

Readers will not be too astonished to discover that Ms Morgan is the daughter of a director and an actor, nor that she reads the Guardian and does her research on Google. Nothing wrong in that, of course. But I’m pretty sure that she didn’t go to school in Buttershaw or Holme Wood, to name two of the more challenging places to teach in the fair city of Bradford. I’d be interested to know how much time she spent living in Bradford before producing this rounded portrait of the city.

Killer quote :

The film finished with the mother refusing to return to their old house with her abusive husband and saying “I divorce thee” three times, as her neighbour had said that was all you needed to do to get a divorce under Islamic law. The script writer forgot to point out that only men can initiate this form of divorce under Muslim law but what the hell – it’s only a film isn’t it?

Andrew Billen in the Times sums it up :

“the telling was so good I almost forgot what propagandist tosh White Girl actually was”