In 1945, as the war still rages, two women lay covered in white bedsheets in a London hospital. They’re both in labor, and they’re both in a great deal of pain. One reaches out her pale hand to the other, who clasps it. And four friends are born — mothers Natalie (Christina Hendricks) and Anoushka (Jodhi May), and their daughters, Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert).

Fast-forward to 1962, and the teenage Ginger and Rosa are inseparable, though Natalie and Anoushka no longer are. The two girls spend nearly every waking moment together, though their personalities are far apart. Ginger is a serious girl who reads Simone de Beauvoir and has aspirations of being a poet. She hears about the Cuban Missile Crisis on the radio and becomes obsessed with helping to avert what she sees as imminent nuclear disaster. Rosa, on the other hand, is more interested in boys than bombs, though she shares clues of an understated but deep belief in God. She attends radical meetings with Ginger but looks incredibly bored.