Review from Val Ruloff of ‘Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret’.

Rave review is well earned here. For starters, gotta love a coming-of-age / rite-of-passage story, don't you agree ?

It's a winning formula for very good reason ... not the least because we all of us have had the (not infrequently painful) experience of growing up and trying to navigate a passage through to adulthood and all the responsibilities.

The content, storyline and themes are related to the phases in the lives of three women .... Margaret, the main character and just at the crucial pre-teen phase; her mother, Barbara, trying to work out her own identity in betwixt and between trying to conform to her roles as mother and wife just relocating to the suburbs. Sylvia is Margaret's grandmother  trying to make the adjustments to life as an older woman whose son and family have moved away from the city and are no longer living nearby .

The film is very well cast, and the characters extremely well drawn and there are some outstanding performances in the lead roles .

There is plenty of humour and laughter in the audience heard during film’s run .

Poignancy apparent, especially as the story unfolds and layers are revealed.

The film tackles some very thorny matters, religion being chief amongst these .

Matters related to women growing up and maturing are not shied away from. The film is unflinching in this respect. Some of the underpinning judgement motif is well illustrated as the story further unfolds , too.

Music score is excellent and very evocative of the seventies era in which the story is set .

This setting adds to the poignancy of the story, speaking as it does to a generation now fifty years older than when the book first came out ... and what a controversy attended it at that time ! Costumes and locations vividly recapture the nineteen seventies. They are vibrantly depicted and deserving of a shout out .

Americana is very much in evidence, featuring as they do the ever-popular cultural references with which we're so familiar .

Really well worth going to see  this film.