'Miller's Girl' Review: Tumblr-fied Script Forsakes Jenna Ortega in 90s-Wannabe Erotic Thriller
R: for sexual content, language throughout, some teen smoking and drinking.
Runtime: 1 Hour and 33 Minutes
Production Companies: Point Grey Pictures, Good Universe
Distributor: Lionsgate
Director: Jade Halley Bartlett
Writer: Jade Halley Bartlett
Cast: Martin Freeman, Jenna Ortega, Dagmara Domińczyk, Bashir Salahuddin, Christine Adams, Gideon Adlon
Release Date: January 26, 2024
Exclusively In Theaters
Gothic Tennessean high school senior and writer Cairo (Jenna Ortega) studies literature under Jonathan Miller (Martin Freeman), an author who turned to teaching when his novels failed to take off. Being a bookworm, she’d already read his assigned reading, leaving him impressed. He takes her under his wing as his star pupil, and the two spend time together outside the school grounds, attending writing events. Cairo's lesbian best friend Winnie (Gideon Adlon) – amused by flirting with the school's coach (Bashir Salahuddin) to get what she wants – convinces her to use her writing to seduce the already-wed Miller. When Miller assigns her a midterm assignment earlier than everyone else, she uses his prompt to project her inner desires about him onto the page, catapulting them into a controversial situation.
Ten minutes in, you can list all the tropes that debut writer-director Jade Halley Bartlett will hit in her screenplay. However, she finds some freshness through Miller's strained relationship with his haughty – albeit entertaining – alcoholic wife, Beatrice (Dagmara Domińczyk). Their loveless marriage is the only thread I gravitated towards, for it illuminates how pathetic and unremarkable Miller himself is. As Miller reveals the smut Cairo wrote about him, Beatrice surprisingly finds humor in knowing he wouldn't think of cheating on her with a friggin' 18-year-old but read him for filth in another manner nonetheless. Dagmara Domińczyk has so much fun playing up this Blanche DuBois-like character with an arrogant spirit.
Jenna Ortega commendably tries to make the Hot Topic-tier gothic material functional for Cairo in ways the writing fails her. She confidently reads all the pretentious excerpts with the familiar confident and ominous demeanor mixed with subtle sensuality in her cadence.
The psychosexual female-led erotic thriller where the teenage schoolgirl is trying to jail-bait her older teacher, most popularized during the ‘90s, has somehow magically reappeared. Think of movies like The Crush or Diary of a Teenage Girl, about young female desire trying to get a bite of a forbidden fruit, penned by an angsty pixie Tumblr girl who let CW shows, Pretty Little Liars, and Molly Ringwald films shape her personality.
The Miller's Girl screenplay desperately wants to walk in line with the familiar tales of before with determination to push the envelope. The lack of clarity in character motivation and dull plot make you question whether an envelope was even present. Bartlett wants to say something about youthful female desire. Still, it's hard to say what it is because the framing is uncomfortably romanticized.
Miller and Cairo's relationship is already walking the greyest of areas. However, Miller's coworker Boris Fillmore falling into Winnie's trappings has you throwing red flags like dollar bills at a strip club. Winnie's critical perception of Cairo's unremarkable accomplishments outside her intelligence and nepo baby wealth (Cairo's parents are out of the picture as she lives in a mansion straight out of Beautiful Creatures) enacts the plot. She writes a bizarre dissertation about how sex with older men appears better than sex with someone their age. One can't fault Winnie because of her youthful ignorance. Fillmore's participation in it, however, has you wanting to put the man in jail, especially with how he comes onscreen wearing a higher badge of morality towards Miller.
While Winnie's words seem to be Cairo's main drive, Bartlett fails to commit to that notion or make anything outside of the "provocative" midterm assignment Cairo submits as a plot point. She shifts the relationship between Cairo and Miller into a confusing conversation on what makes a good writer, boiling it down to acting on impulse/making bad decisions for the plot. Long-winded narration such as this: "Survival and desire amalgamated and turned an aphotic eye inward. I saw my expectations dismantled and dismembered by the harsh and starving dogs of reality. Chews in the vacuity of space like a supergiant star burning to ash. All elements are too weak to withstand the awesome heat. We are what we are. And all creatures must eat," is enough to have one roll their eyes to the back of their head.
Miller’s Girl has Martin Freeman and Jenna Ortega delivering fine performances. Yet, writer-director Jade Halley Bartlett's hollow, manic-gothic Tumblr girl-styled writing fails to reach a meaningful, intelligent margin in her thematic storytelling.
Rating: 1.5/5 | 34%
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