Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Prismark10 Alfred Hitchcock was a rightly admired director and the master of suspense.His filmography also shows that he had several actors that regularly appeared in his movies such as Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, James Stewart etc.The Girl is a television movie that depicts a harrowing working relationship between Alfred Hitchcock (Toby Jones) and Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) while making the films The Bird and Marnie.The problem is what is presented as the truth is really a fictional account with the spin that Tippi Hedren is still alive to embellish actual events.Here we have Hitchcock falling for the nubile, young starlet and making her life hell on the film set especially after he feels rejected by her. Hedren later complained that Hitchcock ruined her promising film career.Toby Jones to me does not quiet cut it as Hitchcock in his look and voice. It is as interpretation he is giving and that is of a man who is obsessed, slightly perverted and deranged.I was more impressed by Sienna Miller as Hedren who plays the role as the classic blonde that Hitchcock liked to have in his films.The film leaves a sour taste behind with what is a character assassination of a respected but difficult director three decades after he died.

Ana_Banana A frequent error people (me included) make in regard to biographic films is to take things too literally. We should keep in mind that a film is (or at least should be) a work of art by itself, therefore having its own message, views and means of expression.Everybody is raging against this fine TV film because of its inaccuracies and one-sided take on a great director. But it's not all about him, as in 'Amadeus' it's not just about the real Mozart. During a second viewing of 'The Girl' it occurred to me that we need to see things under the surface: it's a parable about love, refusal, inner torments and mixed feelings, well, that kind of things. And that makes this film human, because a great artist is no saint and a beautiful woman is not always a perfect mother and/or performer ('professional').Was everything in his motivation only about his ego, his unrequited love or sexual desire, or about his 'not aging gracefully' (if I may put it like that and not in Freudian terms)? And of course they didn't insist much on her own motivation: if he has been so abusive as a consequence of their love-hate relationship, why did she still continue to work with him? Just for the fame perspectives, for the money, or to prove him something? We don't really know it from the movie and this is just fine! Life is a mystery (so sings Madonna on my TV in 'Like A Prayer' exactly as I was starting to write it!). Talk about serendipity...Being a Romanian, it was easy for me to recognize in this film, among the other aspects, a similarity with the Romanian myth of Manole the Craftsman, who had to sacrifice his beloved wife within the walls of the church he was building in order to make them stand. It's a well known East-European symbol of the need for sacrifice in art and I think it's not too far fetched a key for interpreting this film (which visually and acting-wise looks very good to me, by the way).

tomsview Wow! Is that really what happened? In many biographies about Alfred Hitchcock, the most Tippi Hedren ever said about the incident when Alfred Hitchcock supposedly propositioned her was, "Demands were made of me that I could not acquiesce to." But in "The Girl", Toby Jones' Hitchcock puts it right out there when he says to Sienna Miller's Tippi Hedren, "From now on, I want you to make yourself sexually available to me at all times. Whatever I want you to do, whenever I want you to do it." Possibly it happened that way, Tippi Hedren seems to have been consulted by the filmmakers. My feeling is that where there was that much smoke there had to be fire, but just how fair is "The Girl"?The movie is nothing less than interesting. Toby Jones is amazing, and Sienna Miller more than holds her own, but opinion over the film is divided. On one side are those outraged that Hitchcock's reputation has been besmirched without a chance to defend himself, while on the other are those outraged at what Hitchcock appears to have done to Tippi Hedren."The Girl" relates how Alfred Hitchcock groomed the inexperienced Hedren to star in "The Birds" and "Marnie". During the process, Hitchcock changed from mentor to monster becoming totally obsessed with her. Eventually he made an overt sexual advance. She refused and that was the end of the relationship.One scene in "The Girl" does undermine it. It's the somewhat salacious screen test where Hitchcock asks Hedren to give Martin Balsam a long lingering kiss. Unfortunately for the makers of "The Girl", the actual test clip is fairly well known from documentaries and YouTube, and is a lot less threatening than the recreation. In reality, Balsam and Hedren actually seem quite comfortable with each other. It was silly to overdo a scene that is so accessible; it leaves you wondering how much over-egging went on with the rest of the custard.The difference between Hedren and Hitchcock's other leading ladies was that they were better able to handle him. Most were established stars, surrounded by husbands, boyfriends and agents, but Hedren didn't have all that; she was just starting out and was far more vulnerable.According to some sources, it was about this time that Hitchcock's judgement also seemed to be slipping. The suppressed voyeuristic tendencies and fantasies that helped inform his great films were taking on a harder edge. He now wanted to be explicit in what he showed.Up until then, the Motion Picture Production Code kept him in check. Would films like "Rear Window", "Vertigo" or even "Psycho" be the enduring classics they are today if Hitchcock had been allowed to go all the way? The censor made him innovative and subtle. However, by the late 60's the Code was gone. No one ever ranks 1972's "Frenzy" among his greatest movies; plenty of rape and nudity on display there. Fortunately he never made "Kaleidoscope"; with what he had planned, it could have been a real legend killer.As far as "The Girl" is concerned, maybe it's best to just enjoy the show. Toby Jones' Hitchcock is even better than his Truman Capote, genius really, the voice is perfect, and Sienna Miller is so beautiful that you can believe that a fat, old auteur could harbour a fantasy or two about her. But maybe the last words on the subject could be the classic line Hitchcock once directed at an actor who was getting a bit too worked up about things, "Don't worry, it's only a movie".

Skint111 As Total Film magazine said of this one-off drama, "it amounts to nothing less than a wholesale character assassination". They were right – it makes Albert Goldman's biography of John Lennon appear hagiographic.While it looks great and Sienna Miller is fine as Hedren and Jones captures Hitch's voice well, The Girl is a narrow and nasty portrayal of the world's greatest film director. In its attempt to construct a drama it forgets some important points: people often have to suffer for their art; Alfred Hitchcock was a film director who knew his audience better than anyone, his understanding of the human condition was deep, and he realised that the thing that mattered most was the experience that the audience would derive from his work. If it meant discomfort and long hours on the set, that was a price worth paying – there's no room for fluffy dressing gowns and tea and biscuit breaks when you're trying to create a masterpiece, something that might last for centuries.To suggest that Hitch unexpectedly sent a model bird crashing through a telephone box window just to terrify and "punish" Hedren, as opposed to being a desire to frighten the wits out of the audience, is absurd. The shoot of The Birds had been meticulously planned for – literally – years, and in any case, why would Hitch risk harming his leading lady's features? The greatest of people are endowed with light and shade, and possess the ability to view human existence from deep and differing positions. Hitchcock was one of these people. This greatness is something to be lauded – not bemoaned and belittled, as was the case with The Girl.