FRENCH filmmaker Céline Sciamma’s third feature, observing black teenaged girls living in deprived social, intellectual and emotional circumstances, is not an easy film to get one’s head around.

Here’s how notes about it for Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival summarise it: “Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys’ law in the neighbourhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.”

That may seem straightforward, but by the time it’s over, you might be feeling a bit emotionally wrung out. Which is no bad way to leave a film, merely unexpected. Expectations of a happy outcome don’t last long. Early in the film, Marieme (Karidja Touré) changes her name to Vic and joins Lady (Assa Sylla), Adiatou (Lindsay Karamoh) and Fily (Mariétou Touré) in an aimless odyssey among other black adolescents. Lives spiral downward. How bad can it get before some kind of epiphany comes to their rescue?

That’s about it. The youngsters are all beautiful. It is their existences that are ugly. That’s why “Girlhood” warrants seeing. Optimism is an outcome worth yearning for.

At Palace Electric