In recent years, Jim McKay has directed mainly for television (e.g., “The Wire,” “Law and Order,” “Breaking Bad”), but in the late 1990s and the early years of this century, he made several distinctive, independent films. January brings us the chance to see again McKay’s film “Girls Town” that made a modest splash nearly three decades ago. Now newly restored, Jim McKay’s feature debut was written in collaboration with its stars, Lili Taylor, Bruklin Harris, and Anna Grace, and features an ensemble including Guillermo Diaz, Michael Imperioli, and John Ventimiglia. Newly restored in 4K by nonprofit lab Indie Collect, Film Movement Classics has acquired the film for a North American theatrical release, which will begin showing January 17 at New York City’s IFC Center.

This low-budget social realist film is character rather than narrative centered. The bare narrative portrays a group of high school friends’ anger after a fourth suddenly and shockingly commits suicide because she was raped. The rest of the film is a depiction of her surviving friends’ interactions and feelings. The girls come from somewhat different worlds: Emma (Anna Grace) is ambitious, a fine student heading for Columbia; strong-willed Angela (Bruklin Harris) likes to play basketball and wants to be a writer; and Patti (a raw, powerful performance by Lili Taylor, once a major star of indie film) is a tough single mother who is a bit older, clearly working class, and has spent more than four years in high school. The father of her child, Eddy, is an abusive lout.
Angela is Black, and the other two are white, but the film is not interested in racial identity or even in their social class differences. Its emphasis is on gender, with both Black and white girls subject to brutal and chauvinist behavior by men—race not playing an overt role. And their differing personalities don’t get in the way of their support of each other. They all seem to have parents, who understand little of what they are going through, so it is the group that provides solace.
After their friend Nikki (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) commits suicide, the girls discover reading her journal that she was raped by a man who was supposed to be a mentor, and they decide to engage in payback for the boys and men that have wronged them. The girls’ talk is laced with profanity but feels authentic rather than self-conscious or contrived. In scenes that follow no clear chronology, we see them cutting classes and hanging out in the graffiti-filled dugout of a local baseball field and in the equally graffiti-ridden bathroom of the high school.
Some of their anger is conveyed through the graffiti they scrawl like “subvert the patriarchy” and much more obscene expressions of rage. There is also something adolescent about the nature of their revenge on male rapists and chauvinists, but in most cases their victims deserve their fate. The girls’ feminism is experienced more than thought through and conceptualized—it is part of their daily life. But that is understandable, given that they are just graduating high school and not quite adult. There are a couple of moving scenes. In one, the trio realizes that even though they have spent a lot of time together, they really don’t know each other well; much has been left unspoken and unexamined in their relationship. In another scene, Patti painfully reveals her exhaustion being a single mother.
McKay’s film has few striking images and camera angles and no special effects or melodramatic turns. Its strength lies in its truthful rendering of the relationships of teenage girls. However, its emphasis is more on the solidarity and power of the girls’ response to male aggression and brutality than on the psychological nature of their friendship. The film is not quite polemical, but its feminist message still dominates the action—and is the most memorable aspect of McKay’s film.