I love found footage movies and fake documentaries, but A Girl Like Her was not for me. It is a fake documentary that uses confessionals from Avery, a popular girl, and Jessica, a bullied teenage girl, who secretly shot footage of a bully at the urging of her best friend, Brian. The film takes great pains not to oversimplify the issue by trying to see things from the bully’s point of view instead of just demonizing her. This movie is more like a feature length after school special or public service announcement against bullying, which has value.
Remember how the last Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, had several endings, but most people found that acceptable because we didn’t want it to end. My main problem with A Girl Like Her is that it feels like it has several beginnings, and it never really gained momentum. The movie starts with Brian’s footage, Jessica’s footage, the fake documentary then Avery’s footage before the story actually moves forward. If there was an actual mystery, this narrative technique could create suspense regarding what happened so that when it is revealed, we feel a release, but when the movie starts, we already know exactly what happened and who did it.
I kept asking myself if A Girl Like Her had to be a fake documentary or if it could have been a more traditional drama. I believe that Amy S. Weber, the writer and director, genuinely believes that bullies will change if they are willing and able to see their behavior, thus the secret footage is absolutely essential for this movie to work. I think this movie reveals that Weber has a good heart, but is perhaps a little naïve. It is basically an intervention episode for bullies. I am convinced that a percentage of bullies if confronted with video of his or her behavior would still seem themselves as the victim and be unrepentant thus video taped footage of extrajudicial executions, people harassing others for being different or calling the police on people for not breaking the law. I think that my inability to believe this fiction affected my enjoyment of the film.
A Girl Like Her is pure fantasy. I am not a psychologist and am not characterizing all suicide attempts in the following manner, but a contributing factor in some suicides is the idea of being able to express and direct that expression of pain to a specific audience without suffering any counterarguments that attempt to minimize your pain. You’ll be sorry for how you treated me. I think that it is slightly dangerous for a movie to play into that trope. We have enough real life incidents such as the Phoebe Prince suicide to show that after death, the bullying continues, but criminal charges will suddenly alter bullies’ behavior.
A Girl Like Her also suffers from the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit problem. I adore that show, but the narrative frequently will explain a rapist’s behavior by depicting an abusive mother. Do all bullies have a bad home life? It is plausible, and I did unquestioningly accept this theory in Stephen King’s It. A teenage boy bully has an awful father, but Beverly has an awful father too so it felt less like a mathematical equation and more like a snapshot of the real world. Some people are abused and become better people. Some people are abused and become abusers. While trying to create empathy for the bully, films and television shows simultaneously want to distinguish the viewer from the bully so we can feel comfortable that we are not like the villain because the villain had an awful mother.
A Girl Like Her unintentionally takes it one step further. She isn’t just an awful mother, but there is one scene that implies that if she would just defer to and obey her husband, the bully’s home would be more harmonious. The mother is a hectoring and belittling woman who ridicules the men of the house, her husband and her college age son, for not having successful careers. I’m sure that there are some cases where these factors exist, but it is such an oversimplification of reality. I’m not saying that this movie thinks that teenage girls with submissive or nice mothers can’t be bullies too, but it depicts the world this way.
We try to superimpose formulas onto human behavior because it helps us to make sense of the world. It makes the world less scary as if those that we love can’t be the villains, which is comforting, but sadly not true. You can be the villain. I’m hesitant at any movie’s attempt to go beyond depicting bullying and explaining what causes it. A Girl Like Her had its heart in the right place, but it contributes nothing new to what we already know about bullying.