God Help the Girl (2014)

Directed by: Stuart Murdoch
Country: UK

Movie Review: The lead singer of the Scottish indie pop band ‘Belle & Sebastian’, Stuart Murdoch, makes his directorial debut with “God Help the Girl”, a musical drama written by himself, starring Emily Browning, Olly Alexander and Hannah Murray. Murdoch already had contributed for the soundtrack of several movies including “(500) Days of Summer” and “Juno”. The story turns around Eve (Browning), an anorectic teenager with aptitude for songwriting, who escapes the hospital facility where she was being treated to go to a concert in Glasgow. She easily becomes friends with guitarist/songwriter James (Alexander) who in turn, introduces her to Cassie (Murray), his music student. The three become good friends and the possibility of forming a pop band starts to take shape. Meanwhile, Eve starts a relationship with Anton (Pierre Boulanger), the selfish singer of a successful rock band, making James jealous. Lumbering and focusing on irrelevant details, “God Help the Girl” was quite monotonous along the way, never hauling articulated emotions from its characters to gain our sympathy. I just couldn’t be entertained with a story whose depicted problems never seemed to be real problems in my eyes. Even the sweet songs became pretty boring after a short time. Flaccid and far from innovative, Mudoch’s drama aimed a feel-good posture that annoys more than it is cool. Its ambition felt short, and God, help Murdoch in his next move because this one wasn’t so considerable.