Sally Potter’s Ginger & Rosa is a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of impending nuclear disaster, bookended by the birth of our protagonist shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima and her late adolescence – coinciding with the Cuban missile crisis. Sadly, considering the scope for thoughtful reflection its premise provides, most of the film is an unwieldy mess. The narrative flitters between short passages about Ginger’s involvement with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament, her oddly uncomfortable relationship with her best friend Rosa, and the dissolving relationship of her parents. If a summary of its content doesn’t suggest direction or purpose, it’s because there is none. Potter cycles through these strands during the course of her film’s merciful ninety minute runtime, forgetting each in turn to focus on the next, leaving none well-developed enough to sustain serious interest. A charitable interpretation, that the seemingly aimless meandering of the film echoes the confusion of life on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, is undermined by the fact that Ginger quickly takes to strident political activism.

The central performance by Elle Fanning is underwhelming, despite inexplicable critical notices to the contrary. To commend her, she does perform the miracle of making sympathetic a character that is, on paper, utterly insufferable – a schoolgirl who militantly campaigns for nuclear disarmament between reading Simone de Beauvoir and Bertrand Russell, and gleefully listening to her equally insufferable father put forth boring and rehearsed arguments for the non-existence of God. Unfortunately, with the exception of an extraordinary display at the film’s climax which makes me hopeful for her future, Fanning struggles to cope with the demands of dramatic material. The film certainly isn’t without compelling performances – Timothy Spall does well in a small role as Ginger’s godfather and Alessandro Nivola makes the best of a bad hand playing the aforementioned insufferable, nonconformist father – but it hardly makes up for the limited performance of its lead.

Sloppy storytelling aside, the film is at least visually interesting. Cramped compositions and tight close ups neatly reflect the closing-in of a world under seemingly immediate threat of nuclear apocalypse, as well as the retreat of a young girl into herself when confronted with chaotic relationships. Low shots of the girls foregrounding derelict industrial sites foreshadow an apocalypse that never comes but always might. There isn’t a consistent visual pattern, and some scenes are rendered incongruously bright and chirpy, but a number of the images are memorable, beautiful, and poignant.

Besides its well-conceived and well-captured imagery, the saving grace of the film is its explosive conclusion, which sees everything that comes before pulled into sharp focus in an incredible piece of domestic melodrama. It’s a very brave disjuncture from the rest of the film and it’s handled very well, largely because it succeeds in creating a scenario for emotional release and thematic clarification without contrivance. Even the climax, however, is not without its faults. Christina Hendricks, who does well through the rest of the picture in her portrayal of Ginger’s sympathetic and unloved mother, dampens a pivotal moment with particularly stilted delivery (the fruits of her noble attempt at an English accent). As good as the conclusion generally is, and as much as it gives coherence and purpose to the piece as a whole, it does little to nullify the often painful experience of watching the formless and placid occurrence of the eighty-or-so minutes prior.