About a Girl opens with a striking shot of a silhouette — against a skyline of clouds above a field — of a girl singing the Britney Spears song "Stronger" and doing the dance routine. It cuts abruptly to a close-up of the girl talking in a strong Mancunian accent to the camera: "If Jesus were alive today — right, he'd probably be a singer." She is walking against a backdrop of Manchester's industrial landscape, talking non-stop, mixing wry statements about stardom and singers with random quotes from her parents and descriptions of her life: her relationship with her dad, her frustrations with her mum, her desire to become a famous singer, the band she has formed with her friends. Things any 13-year-old might talk about. Her monologue is interrupted and intercut with different scenes of her with her family and her dad; her in a perfume department, sitting on a bench singing "Stronger" again, and on the back of a bus with her girlfriends singing "Oops!... I Did It Again" by Britney Spears and doing the routine.
As she goes on walking alongside a canal, the girl's stories become more and more underlain by an uncomfortable feeling that the gravity of her experiences does not match her flippant retelling of her everyday life: her descriptions of her pop idols and her favourite ice cream are mixed with hints about family troubles, poverty and domestic violence.
The 'underside' to her light-hearted storytelling is revealed in a shocking scene when, stating that she has become "good at hiding things", she throws the plastic bag she has been carrying into the canal.
(Quoted from Wikipedia)
