Girlhood

Documentarian Liz Garbus masterfully turns her minimalist camera's eye on young girls institutionalized at the Waxter Juvenile Facility near Baltimore.

Documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus spent three years shooting two teenagers living in a Maryland juvenile detention center. The completed film is called Girlhood and it feels as much a work in progress as its two troubled subjects do.

Gripping and even-handed film.

As spare as the juvenile institution in which much of it was filmed. As you watch it, you wish the film would fill in more of each girl's background.

A fine example of what a filmmaker can achieve when she takes on a great subject and lets it play out with all the respect and attention it deserves.

An eye-opening sociological examination that is alternately moving and tedious.

The impulse to end on an "up" note, to turn complex and contradictory lives into palatable narratives, is one of the least-examined pitfalls in nonfiction filmmaking. But in her attempt to give their lives a shape that the girls themselves seem to resist, this talented filmmaker has done both herself and them a disservice.