Budding sexual awakening is explored with a resolutely and refreshing female sensibility in this evocative study of a teenage girl’s attempts to attract an older guy during a hot Brooklyn summer.
It subtly and gradually—yet ineluctably—conjures a world that I was sorry to leave. I didn’t want this movie to end.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2013
It Felt Like Love 2013
Budding sexual awakening is explored with a resolutely and refreshing female sensibility in this evocative study of a teenage girl’s attempts to attract an older guy during a hot Brooklyn summer. Although 14-year-old Lila is the film’s subject, her lovely nubile form, skimpily clad for the beach or to cope with urban heat, is not its object. Instead, we see the world through her desiring gaze. Shifting her focus from her friend, the worldly Chiara, whom she emulates right down to dying her hair the same colour and repeating Chiara’s sex talk, she comes to concentrate on handsome, tattooed Sammy – caressed by the camera in ways that evoke such European filmmakers as Claire Denis. Lila’s quest takes her into some dangerous situations, but there’s nothing punitive in filmmaker Eliza Hittman’s treatment of her recklessness. Her sensual, gritty and unsettling debut is very alert to the humiliations, deceptions and hurts of teenage experience. — Sandra Reid