\n\tTaking its English-language title from a Sonic Youth song, Little Trouble Girls is, from its first provocative image to its final, affectionate close-up, an intoxicating communion of the earthly and the angelic. <\/p>\n
\n\tFocusing on an introverted student who joins her school\u2019s choir and falls under the spell of a more adventurous girl, director Ur\u0161ka Djuki\u0107 deftly mashes up the female sacred and edge-of-17 precociousness. She begins the movie with a lingering close-up of a medieval artist\u2019s rendering of Christ\u2019s wound, a vulval illustration if ever there was one, and a fitting opening spark for this unpredictable drama. With superb performances across the board, particularly from her two young leads, and an adventurous use of visual and aural elements, Djuki\u0107 has conjured an alluring fusion of spiritual awakening and adolescent confusion.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tLittle Trouble Girls\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n
\tSensuous and exquisitely unpredictable.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, Dec. 5 (New York); Friday, Dec. 12 (Los Angeles)
Cast: Jara Sofija Ostan, Mina \u0160vajger, Sa\u0161a Tabakovi\u0107, Nata\u0161a Burger, Sta\u0161a Popovi\u0107, Mateja Strle, Sa\u0161a Pav\u010dek, Irena Tomazin Zagorinik, Damjan Trbove, Mattia Cason
Director: Ur\u0161ka Djuki\u0107
Screenwriters: Ur\u0161ka Djuki\u0107, Maria Bohr
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 30 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tJara Sofija Ostan plays 16-year-old Lucia, who has a sad, faraway gaze and, on her first day in the girls\u2019 choir at her Catholic school, a tentative demeanor. Notwithstanding the dweeby conductor (Sa\u0161a Tabakovi\u0107), there\u2019s a rarefied air in the rehearsal room, and Lucia is attuned to it. But the discovery that leaves her mesmerized is Ana-Maria (Mina \u0160vajger), a fellow alto in red lipstick who arrives in a swirl of alpha-girl self-confidence. Lucia\u2019s mother (Nata\u0161a Burger), who\u2019s attentive and caring but strict in the way that unhappy people tend to be, forbids her to use makeup. She wants her daughter to step out of her shell, but only so far.<\/p>\n
\n\tMost of the film takes place during the choir\u2019s three-day intensive rehearsal at an Ursuline convent across the Slovenian border, in Cividale del Friuli, Italy. The bus ride there draws Lucia deeper into Ana-Maria\u2019s fold, a clique whose other members are Klara (Sta\u0161a Popovi\u0107) and Ur\u0161ula (Mateja Strle). They\u2019re practiced hands at this annual weekend excursion, but Lucia is fascinated everywhere she looks: the unfamiliar countryside, the Devil\u2019s Bridge, the naked man (Mattia Cason) sunbathing on the shores of the river.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe turns out to be one of the construction workers renovating the convent. The noise of their machinery in the courtyard is an annoyance to the conductor. For the girls, though, the men add an element of intrigue to the cloistered setting. Noting a handsome dark-haired laborer and Lucia\u2019s focus on him, Ana-Maria impulsively commits a flirty prank that leads to a pivotal scene between the two girls, an exchange that touches on sin and mischief with the deft mix of concision and physical oomph that defines the screenplay by Djuki\u0107 and Maria Bohr.<\/p>\n
\n\tOver the brief but transformative hours of the trip, Ana-Maria\u2019s inviting warmth gives way to something taunting, and her playful smile takes on a witchy cast, Lev Predan Kowarski\u2019s camera alert to the shifting moods. However welcoming they are at first, Ana-Maria and her minions gradually reveal their mean-girl proclivities. If nothing else, they don\u2019t get Lucia. \u201cYou\u2019re looking at the olive tree?\u201d Klara asks with a condescending smirk when she catches her daydreaming out the window of their dorm room. A nighttime game of truth or dare unfolds as an opportunity for the three friends to grill the inexperienced Lucia, and the sequence culminates in a moment as sublime as it is startling \u2014 for the girls and the audience alike.<\/p>\n
\n\tLater, a conversation with a nun (Sa\u0161a Pav\u010dek) about celibacy and commitment to God provokes derisive disbelief from Ana-Maria and awakens a new awareness in Lucia, an appreciation of life\u2019s nonphysical aspects. At the same time, the trip\u2019s profusion of sensory stimulation leaves her hot and bothered, and unsure whether she\u2019s sexually attracted to her new friend or being seduced.<\/p>\n
\n\tThrough the observant eyes of her awkward yet graceful protagonist, Djuki\u0107 weaves a story in which nothing earth-shattering happens but every moment is loaded with elemental power and possibility. The director and her DP capture the summer light as it bathes the characters but also through bold montages of flowers in vibrant bloom, the close-ups alive with sexual energy and female symbolism. The choir\u2019s voices, entwined and transcendent in renderings of Bach and Slovenian folk tunes, are another blossoming. (The onscreen performers did all the singing for the film, under the direction of Jasna \u017ditnik.) Whispered reveries are another element of the sound design, and are mostly indecipherable (or untranslated) except for the repeated phrase \u201cSound is light,\u201d a declaration of the synesthesia that subtly infuses the movie.<\/p>\n
\n\tEven as Djuki\u0107 celebrates the girls\u2019 united voices, Little Trouble Girls is ultimately about a sensitive soul finding a different kind of harmony, one that doesn\u2019t require conformity. During one rehearsal, the conductor grows belligerent as he taunts a distracted Lucia. \u201cWhere are you?\u201d he demands. At this moment, the grown man and the adolescent girl each have unspoken reasons that have nothing to do with the music. It\u2019s a psychologically brutal scene, and one that leads into the film\u2019s exquisite crescendo and grounded resolution, sequences that make clear that wherever Lucia is, it\u2019s someplace the conductor, Ana-Maria and Klara could never imagine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taking its English-language title from a Sonic Youth song, Little Trouble Girls is, from its first provocative image…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337,18744,50491],"class_list":{"0":"post-325632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-oscars","13":"tag-slovenia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}