Miller’s Girl: Film Review
I love Jenna Ortega and will watch her in everything but her latest film, Miller’s Girl, is an ill-conceived misfire.
She plays Cairo Sweet, a supremely talented high school student who lives by herself in a huge mansion in Tennessee. She bonds with her English teacher Jonathan Miller (Martin Freeman) over their shared love of literature. Cairo makes the uninspired writer feel worth something and he has so much affection for her intellect that the student-teacher line gets blurred.
He gives her preferential treatment and sets her assignment; to write a short story in the style of her favourite author. She chooses the controversial author Henry Miller and writes an indecent and highly inappropriate story about a student-teacher relationship.
Guys, the writing was bad. I didn’t believe these characters were real people and that Cairo and Jonathan were into each other and I couldn’t tell if Cairo actually liked him or if it was all a horrible scheme. I didn’t understand her choices and her transformation from an innocent and intellectual girl to this seductive vamp who smokes didn’t feel earned. What did she want and why? Did she really want to ruin this man’s life with an accusation in the guise of a short story?! Her character simply wasn’t written well enough and her voiceover was very pretentious. Here’s an example: “Heartbreak smells like burning flowers, feels like violence…”
Jonathan’s characterisation was relatively consistent, as was his wife Beatrice (Dagmara Dominczyk) and work colleague Boris (Bashir Salahuddin), but Cairo’s friend Winnie (Gideon Adlon) unbelievably did a complete 180 like Cairo. She began as this larger-than-life person who has such an OTT personality she’s not realistic. But then she became emotional and sympathetic when Cairo used her to get to Jonathan. The writing just wasn’t strong enough and it felt false hearing the actors say the lines in a Southern accent.
Ortega and Freeman were poorly matched so the central tension didn’t work, even though their respective performances were solid enough. Also, the film didn’t know what it wanted to say and it felt morally wrong to watch a story about a deliberate false accusation. Avoid.
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