The lines of good and bad are blurred in Jade Hailey Bartlett's directorial debut, Miller's Girl. Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman star in a film that attempts to untangle a messy web of inappropriate relationships.
Its premise and setup are good, but Miller's Girl flounders when its aspirations outlast its execution. The film aspires to be the next great gothic thriller but hardly clears the Lifetime movie bar or something like Hulu's A Teacher.
No amount of conviction from Ortega and Freeman, who are brave to take on these roles, can fully save Miller's Girl.
Miller's Girl review
Cairo Sweet (Ortega) is a young teenager living alone in the house her parents left her. They aren't dead, rather “permanently overseas.” That leaves Cairo alone with her books in her gothic mansion, where she “wears loneliness like a f**king veil.”
Despite her shell, she's a seeming literary genius — a potential revolutionary. That's why she catches the eye of her teacher, Jonathan Miller (Freeman).
He takes a liking to his student, becoming entranced by her mystique and knowledge. Meanwhile, his home life is a mess with an emotionally distant wife, Beatrice (Dagmara Domińczyk), eager to remind him of his shortcomings.
At the same point, Cairo becomes obsessed with her teacher. Imagine if that girl from the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark got a full film and you have Cairo. She's first enabled by her lover, Winnie (Gideon Adion), who is actively trying to seduce a different teacher, Boris Fillmore (Bashir Salahuddin).
When he gives Cairo a head start on an ambitious creative writing assignments, the results come with haunting consequences. And the lines between the typical teacher-student dynamic are blurred further.
One side of the story
Men are fickle creatures. Their impotence and failures can oftentimes be their biggest weakness. That's not to excuse some of the things that Jonathan does in the film. Rather, that's to point out one of the glaring weaknesses of Miller's Girl.
What Bartlett does in her script is observe one side of that dynamic. Jonathan is tormented by the lack of attention he gets at home, and the tensions between him and Cairo are too present to ignore.
But Miller's Girl sputters when adapting Jonathan's side of the story. Cairo's story of over-ambition and the desire to be an adult with adult emotions are when the film is operating at its highest level. Her search for emancipation feels like something out of Gone Girl (if only the rest of the film was on that level). Even then, a further exploration of Cairo's background could have gone a long way.
A gothic aesthetic
Miller's Girl features a gothic aesthetic that is amplified by its color palette. Lots of dark blue and warm tones mask over the scenes in the film. The woods that Cairo walks through harken back to Twilight (in a good way, I suppose).
Sometimes, though, the film appears to have some sort of motion-smoothing a la Hallmark's films, and it doesn't help the film's credibility. I know it sounds petty to compare something of this film's nature to Hallmark, but it was hard to ignore. It made some of the moments that were supposed to have weight feel like a bad soap opera.
Two good performances
Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman do their best to carry an uninspired script. When there are supposed to be romantic sparks between the two, the film cuts to dream-like sequences with Ortega. Perhaps this was an effort to inspire some sort of connection between the two.
You could chalk it up to the age gap, which is fair. A teacher over the age of 40 shouldn't have great chemistry with a teenage student.
That's not to suggest that Jenna Ortega can't act in a dramatic film. Her performances in The Fallout and You both established that. But there isn't a lot of room for her horror or dramatic chops to shine in Miller's Girl.
Freeman, on the other hand, does have an earnestness about him. It works well for Jonathan, and his shining moment comes during a conversation with his wife and Boris as she degrades him. When his career is jeopardized, regret and anguish is sprawled across his face.
The two are overqualified for this film that doesn't sufficiently support them.
Should you watch Miller's Girl?
There's something poetic about the fact that Ortega's character is tasked with writing a story in Miller's Girl. She takes the assignment on head-on, writing something page-turning in the process.
That's what Miller's Girl aspired to be — something so gripping that viewers wouldn't be able to turn away. But in the end, it's not nearly as gripping or contentious as it thinks it is.
And that's a shame. You have a steady veteran actor like Martin Freeman and one of Hollywood's blossoming stars, Jenna Ortega, who can't save this flat story.
Grade: C-
Miller's Girl is in theaters.
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