Although imperfect, vehemently so, Jade Halley Bartlett’s Miller’s Girl is still a damn fine time at the movies. This isn’t an easy film to review. The script is beyond pedestrian with all the characters talking as if they’re in an Off-Off-Broadway David Mamet knockoff that’s been produced by drunks. Everyone is too smart for their own good and you’ll occasionally flinch from the garbled wordplay. However, and just hear me out, Bartlett creates a burnished atmosphere where books and literature loom large, and well, that just makes this former English Major happy. Fully realizing that it’s more Valley of the Dolls than Dead Poets Society is part of the movie’s charm. Yes, it’s like trying to extricate Shakespeare from an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, but sometimes you have to get your literary pleasures where you can find them.
The story, which involves the precarious relationship between a high school English teacher (Martin Freeman) and his prize student (Jenna Ortega), is reminiscent of a 90’s erotic thriller, without the, well, eroticism. That’s not to say that it’s not sexy or suspenseful. It is, but in a more bookish (some might say boring) fashion. Bartlett uses this premise to explore the gray area of peoples’ lives when they’re at their lowest; at least that’s the intent. Not necessarily steamy or even transgressive, most moviegoers will be repulsed by the film’s affected narration and forced whimsy, and yet, Bartlett’s willingness to go down this drippy Southern Gothic road without an ounce of reserve drew me into its leatherbound melodrama, even if it’s more paperback trash than Victorian highbrow.
Bartlett seems to have made two movies that melded into one hot mess. On the one hand, she explores the sexually charged interplay between an older man and a young girl, a conceit that’ll get those pearls clutched faster than you can say, “Lolita.” On the other hand, she’s more interested in their…
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