Ghosts

I thought Ghosts was middling. Yet all the reviews I see for the film are largely positive. So I’m probably missing something about why the film is good. That being said, I can only review from my point of view and from that point of view, Ghosts was only okay.

The film follows a teenage named Nina. All of the synopses I read for the film describe Nina as having “mental problems” which is a vague and somewhat offensive term that I hope was just due to some bad translation from the German synopsis. Whatever issues Nina has is somewhat vague though it seems most likely to be a social disorder. One day at her job picking up garbage, Nina saves a girl named Toni from being attacked by two boys. After this, the girls become friends and also sometimes kiss so, maybe they’re more than friends. It’s ambiguous. Toni is cool, confident and convinces Nina to join her in her daily routine of minor crime and constant lying. The film has a secondary plot of a French couple looking for their long-lost child. The mother sees Nina and comes to believe Nina is her long-missing daughter.

The main theme of Ghosts seems to be loneliness. Nina is isolated and socially awkward. When Toni enters her life, she latches on quickly to her despite Toni being definitely bad news. The same is true with the woman who believes she is Nina’s mother. Both characters ends up throwing themselves into the possibility for a chance at a deep, mother-daughter connection. The film reminds me a lot of House of Hummingbird which is also a film about a young girl in desperate search of human connection. But House of Hummingbird worked for me whereas Ghosts left me a little cold.

Part of the disconnect is because we see the world from Nina’s point of view. Especially when Nina is with Toni, she’s not always clear about where they are going and why. As Toni drags her to parties and auditions, Nina is at a loss as to why they are there and so am I as an audience. Ghosts never explains why I should care about these characters and more importantly, the activities Nina and Toni do.

Plus, Toni just disappears from the story. Much as I understand that this was another way to show Nina being abandoned by people, it means that we never got an emotional climax to Nina and Toni’s relationship. They met, they were close for a few days, they slept together and then we never see Toni in the movie again.

Given that Toni disappears from the final act of the film, I guess the main plot point here was Nina and the woman who might be her mother. And yes, this film did have an emotional climax in the last ten minutes of the movie. It was largely successful and I felt an emotion. But then why wasn’t this the focus? Toni physically drags Nina away from this plot point early in the film .What follows is a solid portion of the movie where we don’t see the mother at all and just see Toni and Nina. Toni and Nina are given much more time together yet their relationship never concludes satisfactorily or leads to a major emotional scene.

Despite being under 90 minutes, Ghosts feels like a slow film. It shows us a few days in the life of Nina, especially her brief relationship with the rebellious Toni. While this relationship is the film’s queer element, it was my least favourite part as the film never made a good argument about why I should care about this relationship. Again though, most people seem to like this film so maybe I’m missing something. As far as films about queer teens with themes of loneliness and abandonment go however, House of Hummingbird is definitely the superior film in my eyes.

Overall rating: 5.8/10

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