Taking its title from a teenage disco, this eagerly anticipated first feature from British artist Tracey Emin marks a new chapter in her body of autobiographical work. Drawing on her experiences of growing up in Margate, the film features six teenage girls – Frances, Helen, Katie, Keiri, Laura and Lizzie – who all have a story to tell. One moment filled with bravado, the next awkward and insecure, the girls' stories capture the essence of being a teenager resonating with our own remembered experiences. What follows illustrates, through a collagist structure, the social and private worlds of girls coming of age. While men are bodily absent from the film, their presence haunts the shadows as brief encounters leave giant dents in the girls' lives. In a series of interviews to camera, the Margate girls' stories are teased out of them. There are secrets, disclosures and cover-ups. Sexual discovery and shame dominate much of their experience, filtered through the diction of small town life. The girls hang out, playing Twister on the beach, catching their transient teen identity with passport pictures, riding the roller coaster, dancing, painting their toenails, reading magazines.
The film is also Emin's poem to Margate, mixing DV footage and Super8 film into lyrical montage. The natural beauty of the sea and the sunsets is linked with Margate's more manmade pleasures, underscored with a selection of 1970s songs that formed the soundtrack to the artist's own adolescence. Shot last summer in Margate, London and Egypt, this is a personal history at its most adventurously cinematic.
Production: Revolution Films, BBC Films
Cinematographer, editor: Sebastian Sharples
Sound: Rashad Omar
Composer: Melissa Parmentier
Cast: Elizabeth Crawford, Laura Curnick, Katie Foster Barnes, Helen Laker, Keiri Noddings, Frances Williams
Format: DigiBeta, Color
Running time: 62 min.
Language: English
