God Help The Girl is at once a movie, a band, and a song. When I was looking for new music on Spotify, I came across the eponymous song, which I immediately took to. “God Help The Girl” is a fun, dreamy pop song that is both quirky and catchy–think She & Him. It sounds significantly like Belle & Sebastian because the whole project is the brainchild of Stuart Murdoch, leader of Belle & Sebastian. In 2008, he formed a band and wrote songs for the movie he was working on, also called God Help the Girl and released in 2014.
The movie, which won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award at Sundance, is a hipster musical set in Glasgow, where not much really happens but the gorgeous look and sound, in my opinion, make up for the lack of plot. Eve, the main character (played by Emily Browning), decides to leave the hospital where she is being treated for anorexia and soon meets up with James (Olly Alexander), another aspiring musician. They and their friend Cassie (Hannah Murray) ostensibly form a band, but mostly they wander around the landscape and sing. It’s from a Wes Anderson producer, so everything feels very vintage and well-arranged. Overall, I really enjoyed the aesthetic and the music, which cover the sometimes thin plot.
The songs on the soundtrack, mostly sung by Eve, range from bits of dialogue to full-fledged pop songs. Highlights include the eponymous “God Help The Girl,” the aptly-named “Perfection As A Hipster,” the energetic “I’ll Have To Dance With Cassie,” and the sleepy closer “Dress Up In You.”
Click here to watch the trailer for the movie and here to watch a video for “God Help The Girl.”
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