Pyjama Girls

Published: Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Review by Michelle Culbert
They are everywhere you look. In the centre of town, standing beside you in Spar, doing their shopping and even walking their children to school. If you look around you anywhere in Dublin, you see throngs of women and young girls wearing their pyjamas as outer wear. And the public really don't like it.
Director Maya Derrington examines this new phenomenon in the beautifully touching film The Pyjama Girls. Following the day-to-day life of 15 year-old Lauren Dempsey and her best friend, Tara Salinger, Derrington attempts to unearth the reasoning behind this new attire. The first thing that strikes you is the amount of venom directed toward these girls. Whatever wearing pj's represents to the general public, the backlash is unforgiving. It could be construed as a symbol of laziness, dysfunction or unemployment. All themes very much present in this documentary.
Shot in inner-city Dublin, it handles the delicate subject of living in poverty and all that accompanies it. The main character, Dempsey, is being raised by her grandmother as her mother is a heroin-addict and predominantly missing from her children's lives. Lauren is a troubled girl and often her behaviour veers toward the horrific. It is a credit to Derrington's directing skills that we can also see the tender and vulnerable side to a girl largely forgotten by society. Herein lays the crux of the entire film. With her strong Ballyfermot accent, Lauren narrates her way through a harrowing life story that sees her mother beating her mercilessly and the main character making the decision at the tender age of eight years-old to hand herself and her younger sister into the care of her grandmother and grandaunt. Lauren is a beguiling mix of street-wise maturity and extreme vulnerability, tinged with an element of the toughness required to survive in this environment.
Interwoven with genuine moments of laugh-out-loud humour, we get to examine the underbelly of this drugs-addled culture living right on our doorsteps. In a tragic revelation, Lauren informs us that her mother is the youngest of twelve children of which only five are still alive. And in Lauren's own words, the remaining five are just "hanging in there".
While the subject of this documentary can be very daunting and bleak, the strong friendship between the two girls proves to be their saving grace. The loyalty and love displayed offers a glimmer of hope into an otherwise dark world. Another startling aspect of the film is the complete lack of any male presence throughout. There is one reference to the possibility that Lauren met a man who could be her father. Apart from this small vignette, it is a resounding matriarchal film with strong female characters, such as her grandmother and grandaunt, carrying and supporting the girls as best they can. Coupled with the fact that wearing pyjamas in the street is a female-only trend, the film focuses on the female roles fulfilled in this culture and you have to question where have all the male influences - negative or positive - gone?
It's a thought-provoking, endearing but realistic look at life for these young girls. The film succeeds because it may cause the viewer to reserve judgment in the future when they encounter one of the newly-emerging tribe. And to answer the question of what lies behind this new epidemic of pyjama-wearing, it's best to let Lauren answer that herself with a challenging question of her own: "Society doesn't give a toss about us so why should we give a toss about society?"
The film will be on general release in theatres shortly. You can also access it on info@stillfilms.org.