Movie Review: 'Miller's Girl' With Jenna Ortega Is An Airless, Cold Affair That Fails To Spark
Jenna Ortega's intense performance as a glamorous Gen Z goth princess takes a pointless and awkward turn in "The Miller Girl," a new romantic horror movie about smart people who are just boring.
The film, written and directed by newcomer Jade Hayley Bartlett, tells the classic story of a teenage girl who is seduced by her older teacher. He wants to get closer to Vladimir Nabokov, but the police tell him: "Don't get so close to me."
Ortega plays Cairo Sweet, an 18-year-old college student from Tennessee, a precocious rich girl with a tragic, icy personality. “Literature is my solace in loneliness and writing is my only escape,” he says, like most 18-year-olds.
Sweets is the type of student who reads a long list of recommended readings before class and enthusiastically reads Finnegans Wake. He has a 4.6 GPA and is "bored to death." She also dresses like Britney Spears in...Baby One More Time.
Unapologetic literature professor Jonathan Miller is the former author of Apostrophes and Ampersands: Six Terribly Romantic Stories who hasn't put pen to paper since he got married and began teaching. He is played by the wonderfully exhausted and sad sheepdog Martin Freeman.
“You're not a writer,” his wife tormented him. “You chose the profession of teacher. Why should I see you as someone else? She plays Dagmara Dominczyk, a semi-curvy woman who works constantly, prickly and touchy. To show your wisdom, use words like "suspicious."
Our hapless Miller begins to spend more time with his student, aroused by her writing skills and his obvious interest in her. "You have an extraordinary talent," he told her. His thirst for approval almost pierces the veil.
They sit and quote memorized passages from each other's works. “You see me and I see you,” he said. There are so many red flags flying during hurricane season.
"Teenage girls are dangerous," his wife said. “They are filled with emotional abuse and humiliation. I hope you know what you're doing." He doesn't know.
Ortega mimics much of his performance as the cold Wednesday Adams, with a latent cruelty constantly emerging through the tremulous silence. It's not hot here. Mister. Miller is inspired by a copy of the Paris Review.
Reality and fantasy mix. Are they really lovers? Or could it all be in his head? Bartlett politely avoids the depth of their relationship and leaves you hanging until the end, as well as what the director is trying to say. Maybe something about tangled ley lines, or maybe these writers are just really terrible people?
The other two characters, Bashir Salahuddin as the other professor and Gideon Adlon as Sweet, the lollipop's vampire friend, are actually much more interesting and, as such, the main couple is unbalanced.
Bartlett drags out the first half too long, establishing the fate of the characters lost in the darkness of the forest, which goes from cute to strange and without any subtlety. The second half is painful: all the arguments and tears. All in all, this movie may be less fun than taking the SAT.
Interestingly, Bartlett's unscripted script, ranked among the best unscripted scripts of 2016, pre-dates #MeToo and perfectly captures her time in 2024. Do we really need a feline Lolita that threatens to bring her to her knees? the lives and careers of your opponents? Bartlett seems to start out talking a lot about art and passion, but ends with nothing more than an apparent distrust of women. This couldn't be his intention.
"The Miller's Girl," a Lionsgate film opening in theaters Friday, is rated R for "sexual content, strong language, teen smoking and drinking." Duration: 93 minutes. One star out of four.
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MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Children under 17 must be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.
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Online: https://www.lionsgate.com/movies/millers-girl
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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits.
