Margate moments hits spot

Top Spot is, or was, a tawdry-glamorous dance hall in Margate. Apparently (and this may come as news to some readers), it's also the point at which the penis hits the neck of the womb during intercourse.

Sex, sleaze, drama, desire: one would hardly expect anything else from Tracey Emin. Premiered in the London Film Festival on Friday prior to its release on 3 December, it's typically personal and quirky, somewhere between documentary and poetry, narrative cinema and art installation. Even the running time - 61 minutes - occupies the middle ground between short and feature.

It opens with six teenage girls being interviewed - somewhat aggressively - by the off-screen director. One writes love letters to a boyfriend whom she's convinced has joined the Foreign Legion, though everyone else knows he's really in Borstal. Another stolidly accepts her reputation as a "slag"; a third speaks of a recent rape.

It's not clear if they're following a script - certainly some of the artist's own welldocumented experiences are in there - or talking about themselves. A mix of the two seems likely. In either case, their performances are remarkably immediate and persuasive.

But a bare-bones synopsis makes Top Spot sound grim. It's far from that. Shot on DV and Super-8, the main body of the film is an impressionistic montage of moments from these lives, peppered with images of Margate, which comes across as tacky, exuberant, sad and gorgeously beautiful. One of the executive producers is Michael Winterbottom, and this has something of his work's lyrical quality.

For all their problems, the girls also display a tremendous humour, swagger and resilience, with one exception. Top Spot earned an 18 rating from the British Board of Film Classification last week for a brief, sympathetically shot scene near the end involving a suicide. The director, naturally, contests the rating, stating that she wants her film to appeal to the kind of girls in it.

Given the type of piece this is, her hope may be a bit optimistic. But one thing is clear: like Emin's other art, Top Spot is finally about waving, not drowning.