Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (2012) is a French–Canadian drama directed by Laurent Cantet. Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang is suitable for secondary students in Years 11 and 12. The film is a suitable text for study in VCE English, Sociology and Media Studies.

'It was between the ages of thirteen and seventeen that I belonged to Foxfire and Foxfire made sacred those years. ' – Maddy

Told in the form of a memoir by Maddy Wirtz, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang recalls the events that shaped the lives of five small-town girls from working-class families in mid-1950s America.

Legs, along with friends Maddy, Lana, Rita and Goldie, decides to strike out against a patriarchal society that expects them to be nothing more than submissive. Forming a gang and initiating each other with a symbolic tattoo, the Foxfire girls pledge solidarity and to live according to their own rules no matter what.

The gang's harmless pranks about town soon escalate to more violent attacks. Threatening a member of the Viscounts, a gang of teenage boys, with intent to harm, and a joyride that becomes a police pursuit, bring the girls in front of the court. Legs is sent to Redbank State Correctional Institute for Girls and the others are placed on probation. Foxfire is put on hold.

Having served her sentence, Legs returns to Hammond, even more determined to strike out against society. She rents a rundown farmhouse, recruits new members and encourages the girls to become the bait in elaborate schemes to scam money from married men.

When Legs decides to kidnap wealthy businessman Whitney Kellogg, the father of her 'big sister' Marianne, to raise funds to keep the gang together, Maddy chooses to leave. She believes that Foxfire has lost its way. The situation escalates from bad to worse when Kellogg refuses to cooperate and is shot. Legs implores the girls to leave, telling them 'it's over' and that they have nothing to feel guilty about.

It is not until years later, when Maddy is visiting Hammond, that a chance encounter with Rita forces her to confront her years of rebellion and her relationship with Legs and try to make sense of all that occurred.