Director: Celine Sciamma (2015)

Teenage tribulations are a trial in this un-involving French drama.

When Marieme (Karidja Toure) fails her final year at school, she rejects the offer of vocational courses.

Instead she embraces the limits of her horizons and joins the local girl gang. The glamorous Lady (Assa Sylla) is the leader of Adiatou and Fily (Lindsay Karamoh, Marietou Toure) and Marieme brings their number up to the seemingly requisite four.

Together they’re loud, aggressive, popular with the opposite sex but content to accept their circumstances.

Even my pidgin French understands the French title ‘Bande de Filles’ doesn’t translate as Girlhood, but ‘gang of girls’ or less literally ‘girl hood(ies), so it’s safe to assume the title was created to catch the coat-tails of residual goodwill from last year’s brilliant coming of age drama Boyhood.

Marieme – re-named Vic, for victory – is soon sporting the obligatory black leather jacket and straightened hair. Then she’s off out smoking, drinking and robbing along with the others. Her character development is traced though her changing haircuts.

Cinematographer Crystel Fournier has nice eye for colour and texture but the plot is weak and the girls are dull. We’re asked to sympathise with them but they’re impressive only in their ordinariness.

Their behaviour may be typical but it’s not pleasant – especially the way work-shy Vic amuses herself by bullying shop girls and organising fights against other gangs.

Eventually she takes the only job she’s prepared to do – working as a drugs mule for the local dealer Abou (Djibril Gueye) but even this potentially interesting development fizzles out.

Girlhood is being lauded for being an unpatronising portrait of black female French teenagers rather than the refined middle class types we’re more frequently presented with.

Unfortunately the story lacks insight; presenting the girls as real people is not the same as showing them in an interesting light.

The girls’ give nicely natural performances but like the gang, the film needs a stronger sense of urgency instead of ambling along without direction and achieving little.

★★☆☆☆