Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging proved that girls’ stories could be meaningful even if they weren’t sexy or scandalous 🖋️ MoyaCrockett for ipaperviews
cast, from left to right: Eleanor Tomlinson , Georgia Henshaw , Manjeevan Grewal and Georgia Groome
I was 16 when the film came out; as a tween I’d inhaled Rennison’s magnificent epistolary novels, adopting Georgia’s Bridget Jones-esque tone and mannered vernacular in my own journal. I found the film’s plot mundane and the script often excruciating – yet I loved it for offering an interpretation of girlhood I both recognised and had never seen on screen before. To paraphrase Chadha,wasn’t a Hollywood version of girlhood, but something genuinely relatable to a generation of British girls.
The story is simple. Georgia develops an obsessive crush on Robbie , and sets out to lure him away from a bitchy rival. She falls out with her best friend. She worries her parents are getting divorced and suffers several low-stakes humiliations that nonetheless feel enormous. The film culminates with Georgia’s 15Throughout, she swings between stroppy and sweet, her insecurities underpinned by an unwavering and sometimes obnoxious confidence in her own brilliance.