Judy loved and I liked this multi-award winning British movie about a 15 year old bad girl in Essex (a county northeast of London near the North Sea). Sadly, I get motion sickness watching jumpy handheld camera work, and there's a lot of that here (update, I now keep a running list of movies that cause MPMS or motion picture motion sickness).
Katie Jarvis delivers a powerful performance as the unhappy Mia and perhaps she knows something of the life she portrays: a high school dropout, Jarvis had a daughter in 2009, a bit before her 18th birthday. Having no previous acting experience, she was having an argument with a boyfriend on a train platform when she was spotted by a casting assistant (coincidentally, that same station, in Tilbury, which she pronounces TIL-bray, is in the movie). Mia loves to dance, works hard at it, and there's quite the hip hop soundtrack with a couple of ballads for balance. Co-star Michael Fassbender has an Irish accent, but is really half Irish and half German, and has used both languages in his film work (Eden Lake and Hunger (both 2008) won a bunch of awards and are on my to-see list, and he was in Inglourious Basterds, playing a Brit who goes undercover as a German). Fassbender's Connor has many layers; not so much Mia's mom (Kierston Wareing, who nonetheless has 6 more movies scheduled for release this or next year), who is predictably raising another bad girl in their council housing (the projects to us Yanks). Both Jarvis and Wareing are originally from Essex, as was Dudley Moore. Their accents can be pretty thick at times but you'll get most of it. I can't tell you Jack's opinion, because he was out of town, but I think he would have liked it, too.
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