Let’s say it straight away, even though this is a documentary, Girls State is devoured like fiction. Real candy, for all politics fanatics, which ends on a clever note of admiration, hope, and… indignation.
After Boys Statein 2020, Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine are back in force with this feminine sequel, which is not really one.
Note that it is not necessary to have seen the first film to appreciate the second. On the menu: school of politics, through a mock electoral campaign, race for party leadership, debate at the Supreme Court, for women only, therefore, and as if you were there. If Boys State has been compared to a kind of Lord of the Flieson the girls’ side, it’s cliché, but it’s true: there’s no free-for-all here, between the victories of some and the defeats of others, it’s rather friendships, and other gestures of solidarity that we accept.
You should know that these famous bootcamps policies (in which a certain young Bill Clinton notably participated) were distinctly launched more than 80 years ago: Boys State (this is also its name in real life) by the American Legion, an association of veterans; and Girls State, by the American Legion Auxiliary, an association of wives and mothers of veterans. However, for the very first time in their history, in Missouri, in 2022 – the year of filming, therefore – the two activities took place at the same time. On the same campus: boys on one side, girls on the other.
We won’t reveal anything to you by telling you that if the cameras are certainly focused this time on the young girls, Emily, Maddie, or Nisha, aspiring budding politicians of varied origins and allegiances, there will be no shortage of comparisons. From the dress code imposed on one side, but not on the other, to the distinct investiture ceremonies (and more serious on one side, we’ll let you guess which), the protocols are brazenly different.
One thing unites them, and it is coach who will say it to thunderous applause (we dare you not to applaud too): they were all raised in a world that has never known a woman president. In other words, as one of the participants put it: they live under a constitution “written hundreds of years ago by a bunch of old white men”.
A significant detail: all of this was filmed live, while Missouri was restricting women’s right to abortion. A mise en abyme as shocking as it is brilliant.
On Apple TV+
Documentary
Girls State
Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine
Starring Emily Worthmore, Maddie Rowan, Nisha Murali, Tochi Ihekona, Faith Glasgow, and Cecilia Bartin.
1:35 a.m.