Miller’s Girl was made for Jenna Ortega’s fanbase and no one else

No matter how many times the controversy resurfaces, we don’t really run out of movie stars – especially when it comes to the fan base. There are still many actors with followers who eagerly follow their favorites from project to project. Jenna Ortega has built such a following from her time as a child actress as a Disney TV star to playing young Jane Jane the Virginthe title role in Netflix Wednesdayand one of the new knife chucks in the Scream reboot series. Her fans have been vocal about how exciting it is to see her take on more mature, independent and ambitious roles. But they’ll have an interesting time figuring out how to swallow their new film. Miller’s girl.

Anyone who felt distant from their peers in high school and was ready to move on to the adult world should find their first spark of recognition in Jade Halley Bartlett’s debut as a writer and director. Miller’s girl Ortega plays the unlikely-named Cairo Sweet, a rich high school student funded by a trust fund who lives a decadent life alone in a huge house while her parents travel. Cairo seems endlessly bored by anything but her own exuberant, over-the-top writing. She briefly finds a soulmate in one of her teachers, Jonathan Miller, played by Marvel Cinematic Universe/Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films/Cornetto Trilogy veteran Martin Freeman. Considering how exhausted they both are from everything else and how quickly they become fascinated by each other, it’s no surprise that this teacher-student relationship quickly goes sour.

What is surprising, however, is how Miller’s girl just as quickly, she loses track and loses everyone in Cairo in an effort to keep the story focused on her.

A lot has been said about this recently whether films are getting longer on average, and whether that’s a problem for anyone except theater owners who want to turn shows around more quickly and the usual Internet fans. But where the tense 90-minute thriller (in this case 93) still has considerable appeal, Miller’s girl is a strong argument for longer films. In this case, it could have really used the extra running time to develop its characters.

Miller’s girl is a small story with only a few main characters, but most of them are broad, cartoonish types reminiscent of the first season of Joy. Cairo’s best friend, Winnie (Gideon Adlon), is a flirtatious virgin who is a constant source of teasing and sex talk until she suddenly shifts into a completely different state halfway through the film. Her sharp left turn is much more justified than the one Jon’s wife Beatrice (Dagmara Dominczyk) takes: She starts out as a lovable workaholic three-quarters of the way through her marriage, then suddenly becomes a vacillating alcoholic who attacks her husband are right out Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?

But the film’s biggest problem is the relationship between Jon and Cairo, which goes so abruptly from a dangerous but touching series of early connections to collapse in the third act that it feels like the second act is missing entirely. It’s hard to say how accurately Bartlett views their relationship: depending on the scene and perspective, Jon understandably comes across as a lonely man who only admires his student’s writings, or an idiot who ignores all of his Makes decisions below the belt. Cairo, for its part, vacillates back and forth Wild thingsA mid-level schemer and an awkward, isolated teenager who is not yet able to realize that she cannot call her teacher a soulmate – at least not if he has a shred of morality or sense of appropriateness in his body.

Miller’s girl is a lush, even overripe film, full of pompous voiceovers from Cairo’s works, alongside snippets of the equally effusive work of other characters. (An excerpt from one of her stories: “Survival and desire mingled, turning an aphotic gaze inward. I saw my expectations dissected and dismembered by the hard and hungry dogs of reality, truths that sit in the emptiness of space like a hyper- “Giant star burning to ash all elements too weak to withstand the terrible heat.” Cairo takes oft-exiled author Henry Miller as her writing inspiration and holds her copy in her hand Under the roofs of Paris as she navigates through high school. Her admiration for his work is evident in her eloquence, her calculated boredom, and her determination to push the boundaries of censorship by turning her writing assignments into sexual fantasies.

The images and production design are often dark and saturated with rich, bold colors, and Bartlett weaves fantasy elements in and out to illustrate her points. It’s compelling visual storytelling, but whether the narrative elements work for a particular viewer depends heavily on whether they find texts like the above evocative or just overbearing and torturous.

What Miller’s girl Best of all – and what gives Ortega a chance to absolutely own this film – is capturing the special era of adolescence, when girls can easily transition between adulthood and childhood without warning. Ortega gets a chance here to play a downright predatory vampire and a giggly, shy schoolgirl without feeling like either of them are a front or a mockery for Cairo. Her adult personality isn’t fully formed yet, and while she tries out faces, just as she tries out words like “abusive” in her lyrics, they’re still all part of her – and they’re all part of the reason why Mr. Miller should know better than to deal with her as anything other than a student.

However, the other characters, including Jon, also fluctuate between their personalities. And they just seem inconsistent and tied to what the story needs in a given scene. The final act is rushed and forced, without the space it needs to give the characters their due or give the audience a clue as to how to approach the leads and their relationship. May December Recently, dealing with the later-life consequences of a sexual relationship between a teacher and her young student took a similar approach, but explored the same ambiguities with nuance and meaningful reflection. Miller’s girl simply flies over the surface and is content with giving this surface a visually splendid appearance.

None of this may matter for Ortega’s fans, because they get to see enough range here to make the trip worth it. Miller’s girl is a sumptuous meal for her, an opportunity to play out different facets of the same girl while finding the connections between them. For everyone else, however, the rations are scarce and more than just underbaked.

Miller’s girl is now in the cinema.