The movie was told from the point of view of the teenage girls who all get pregnant all around the same time (Camille is the first, and it focuses on her). If in the end the girls said "Wow were we dumb!" It wouldn't work. Thats not the mindset of the girls. And it purposely ended like that to show that without Camille, their dream of creating a community quickly slipped away.The movie wasn't meant to show how illogical the girls were. It was to just show, from the girls perspective, why they wanted to do it. And the fact that they never really grasped what that meant for the rest of their lives adds to why they all made this pregnancy pact. I think this was refreshing, because in other film adaptations of what happened (Yes, this is a real event), they try to show how the girls were wrong in the end. But I think this movie offered both sides, and left you to decide if their decision was right or wrong. I think this movie could have gone a little more in-depth with their characters, like Camille, or maybe Clem, but overall I think it was a good representation of mob-mentality and rebellion among teenagers.

17 Girls (2011)Lots of mid-teen girl stuff on French beaches. And yet supposedly a social issue movie about a rash of intentional pregnancies at a high school. There are scenes between the girls that pry into contemporary youth culture but only get the lid off. This is a sensational idea with the depth of a single gasp.Even stranger, once you get into it, is how the movie makers, the writer/director pair Delphine and Muriel Coulin (both did both), took an American high school news story and adapted it to this small industrial coastal city in France. It doesn't right true. The utter rebellion of the kids to reason, their various trajectories around peer pressure and media hype, and the general glibness of some of the school reactions all seem a bit callous, and without nuance. There is an attempt at depth (and some of the best acting) though the main character, Camille, played by Louise Grinberg. Here the need for such rebellion seems to have roots in her psyche and her family situation. How this effect "spreads" and becomes an easy viral sense of irresponsibility is not given much thought, however. There are three or four other girls who are given some complexity, but not enough to quite explain their motiviations.Maybe the project was doomed when the writers faced the central problem—this is both about a large effect (over a dozen girls, en masse) and an individual problem (one by one). How to do both? Especially when it happens pretty much simultaneously.There is a low budget documentary on the real deal—"The Gloucester 18" which is apparently (from their press kit) a kind of public service piece against teen pregnancy— and there is a TV series in Spanish called "El Pacto" that supposedly expands on the sensational aspects of the story. I'm not sure any of it is worth the trouble more than just reading a new article about the phenomenon. The movie here is curious at first, slow to get going, and has a few interesting moments, but it hardly holds up over an hour and a half.

Usually I like French movies, and so it is with some disappointment when I write this quick thrashing of "17 Girls" directed by sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin. The storyline and cinematography are standard fare, with some montage grunge/rock music cuts I didn't care for, but the real problem lies with the intended message. Girls in groups, and in general mob mentalities for people, always seems to bring out the depths of stupidity and utter dumbness. So the directors instead of focusing on the pitfalls and problems of what happened show it as an exciting life- shattering bonding event. Indeed they even throw in the last lines of the movie with something to the effect of the girls took power into their own hands to "dream". This is sad and reprehensible drivel. Poverty and over-population are real problems. This sort of thing is exactly why I've heard people bring up the idea of licensed partenthood. Pregnancy is not some game, and it certainly not some feminist statement. How low directors can stoop ...

The first thing of note here is the quality of the acting and direction. The way everything is natural and believable here is mind boggling. These are very young girls and yet they're caught on film doing things we've all seen young girls do as if the camera were invisible. How is that possible? Because if they're only acting they are incredibly convincing.If I were a director filming a competing film about female adolescents I would shoot myself out of sheer envy. And I'm afraid I can only attribute the poor reviews this film got to something similar. I much prefer a different more masculine kind of film, but I was riveted by this film's persuasiveness. That's quite a trick. This director is ingenious. If he or she is not given some meaty project after this masterful accomplishment then I'm quite sure the movie industry is dooming itself to deliberate mediocrity.The only caveat I have is that the story itself, in the end, is not very satisfying. However, as I understand it, the true story behind this fanciful embellishment was even less satisfying. In other words this movie is a flight of imagination on pretty slim facts. But don't let that stop you from seeing it, it's unforgettable.