Movie Review Skateboarding Girl: Dream Making

By Hong Xiaowen

Drop out, go to school, drop out again, do housework, wait for marriage. This is the life of the protagonist of the film "skateboarding girl" in the village of kimpur, Rajasthan state, India. Born and raised in this poor and backward village, like her mother, her grandmother and her friends, filina seems to have been planning her life trajectory and daily life since she was born. There will be no surprise or change, and "dream" is far away.

It wasn't until one day, Jessica, from London, who came to kinpur village in search of her father's childhood life, changed all this. The Indian British girl and her friend Eric brought colorful and cool skateboards into the children's lives in kimpur village by chance. It was like throwing a stone into the calm lake, which set off the ripples about the interests and dreams of the children in the village, and made fleyna see the new possibilities of life.

However, ferdina's dream of skateboarding is hindered. After taking the skateboard home for the first time, her father scolded her severely, accusing her of not doing housework well but trying to participate in "boy's sports". Then, she married a man in a neighboring village who she had never met in spite of her personal will, and chose the wedding date on the day of the national skateboarding championship that filina was thinking of. However, these difficulties did not stop fleyna, but gave her greater determination. Encountering her father's opposition, she secretly got up in the middle of the night to go skateboarding training; In the noise of the wedding reception team, ferina pulled down her veil and wedding dress, and with her skateboard, she resolutely "fled" to the tournament site, winning awards for herself and the opportunity to dominate her own destiny.

The most moving part of the film is the female friendship gained on the way to pursue her dream. Several women of different ages and cultural backgrounds have created a powerful force in mutual support and understanding. When she can't see the hope of life, Jessica brings her skateboarding and dreams, and also brings her the courage to break the rules and dominate her life; When ferina was forbidden to stay at home by her father, her understanding mother quietly encouraged and supported her to participate in skateboarding learning and training, telling her: "I am weak, but you are not the same as me"; While Jessica was struggling to raise money for the skate park, a well-known local businesswoman agreed to provide land and construction funds just to make some changes in the village; At the skateboard championship, a girl who just finished the competition saw ferdina who rushed to the scene in a hurry wearing slippers and took the initiative to take off her brand-new skate shoes and lend her

Perhaps it is to highlight the theme of women's power, or perhaps because of the limitation of the length of the work, the creator wants to express too many elements. What's more, the portrayal of other characters in the film is somewhat hasty. For example, compared with the rich description of mother's emotional and psychological changes, the image of father in the film appears thin and flat. The father, who constantly obstructs filina from practicing and participating in competitions and forcing her to drop out of school and get married, has been annoyed by his daughter's "heresy". At the last moment, he suddenly changed his attitude and was pleased with his daughter's excellent performance in the competition. In the absence of preparation and transition in the early stage, in order to pursue a successful ending, the role logic is rigidly reversed, which not only fails to enrich the characters, but also weakens the persuasiveness of the story.

Interestingly, in order to make this film, the producer took 45 days to build a desert dolphin skateboard park in this small village in Rajasthan. This community skatepark, which aims to encourage girls to pursue their dreams, is the first skateboarding Park in Rajasthan and one of the largest skateboarding parks in India, where hundreds of local children skate every day.

In the movie, Jessica leads her friends to build a skateboard field, which echoes with the skateboarding Park created by the creators outside the film like an oasis on the desert, and the drama and reality annotate each other. The characters in the film came into reality, and the residents near the shooting site and the audience who had been watching the shooting scene also stepped onto the "stage" of skateboard park. The introduction of skate park at the end of the film makes us believe that the story in the film will continue beyond the camera.

Of course, the film still leaves us with many unsolved questions: what's the fate of these skateboarding girls? Is the skateboard park built by several passionate dreamers just a flash in the pan utopia or a new sustainable community infrastructure? Can such changes really bring new opportunities for children in life? Maybe only time can tell us the answer. If possible, I am looking forward to long-term observation and tracking of the real story of this skate park by the people who have the heart in the production team. Maybe ten or twenty years later, we will see a documentary with the same name of "skateboarding girl" on the screen.