Beat Girl

Beat Girl is a British drama revolving around a young woman, Heather, set on a musical career via prestigious school Juilliard, but due to financial difficulties ends up detouring via DJing and along the way meets a young man and some other meticulously structured script shenanigans that in no way feels compelling or original.

Filmed in the style of a TV film or episode of Eastenders, Beat Girl struggles to carve an identity of its own. For such a quirky title and promising premise of a woman veering from one style of music to another, it all feels too predictable. Characters, dialogue and plot points have all been seen before, and with no visual (or tragically musical) panache there's little to grab onto while watching it. There's nothing inherently wrong with the film, it's competently made considering the low budget, but its built on clichés so if you poke one hard enough the whole thing crumbles.

Performances are all fine with Louise Dylan vaguely bringing an early Claire Danes vibe to proceedings, and Michael Higgs providing adept support as her estranged father.

Coming of age tales are a tricky sub-genre to tackle because they're so ripe for hackneyed things occurring to the characters. So having rich and complex characters contending with unique and surprising twists and turns is what's needed to keep viewers glued to the screen. Beat Girl lacks that special something, as inspiring as its themes are, the content just can't match its promise. It all feels too thought-out, as if the writers were trying so hard to adhere to classical three act structure, they forgot to buck the rules a bit and inject their identity, their own voice, into the tale.

Here's hoping director Mairtín de Barra goes all out for his next feature and shrugs off all conventions. Conventions threaten to shackle people who have visions they want to share with the rest of the world.