Screenings index

Mall Girls

dir. Katarzyna Rosłaniec / Poland 2009 / 82’

subtitles: English

New Polish Films Competition 33 Scenes from Life, Afonia and Bees, Before Twilight, Forest, Four Nights with Anna, Mall Girls, Miracle Seller, My Flesh, My Blood, Rebound, Scratch, Snow White and Russian Red, Splinters, Unmoved Mover Section index

Cast

Anna Karczmarczyk, Dagmara Krasowska, Dominika Gwit, Magda Ciurzyńska, Franek Przybylski, Iza Kuna, Artur Barciś

Film description

We have all seen them. Mall girls, adolescent high school students wearing short skirts, tight blouses and characteristic shoes, roaming shopping malls to find sponsors. In exchange for sex, they get gifts - clothes, cosmetics, and cell phones. Having moved to Warsaw, Ala comes across a group of three teenage prostitutes, the title mall girls. Milena, Kaja and Julia introduce the main character to 'the real, classy life'. The delicate, shrewd and sensitive girl is transformed into a made-up doll in ever-worsening troubles.

The film by Katarzyna Rosłaniec is worth noticing, if only for the undertaken subject. Mall Girls offer quite a sinister image of lower middle-class teenagers, who, left alone, choose this new form of prostitution. The didactic and moralising tone is compensated by good supporting roles, especially Izabela Kuna as Ala's mother and Franek Przybylski as Michał, who falls in love with the girl. The most interesting element of the work by Rosłaniec is the portrait of a society disintegrated by the roaring capitalism, whose unwanted children are the mall girls.

Samuel Nowak