Over the next few years, writer/director Urška Djukić's Little Trouble Girls will take its place among films like Julia Ducournau's Raw and Robert Eggers' The Witch as one of the best and most promising directorial debuts of the 21st century.
Like those, it's a coming of age story centered on a teenage girl that explores the excitement and horror (outside the explicit horror genre this time) of the shift out of girlhood and into adolescence with phenomenal filmmaking.
Most movies are lucky if they deliver one indelible image. Little Trouble Girls offers three in its sub-90 minute runtime; each one a new step on protagonist Lucija's (Jara Sofija Ostan) journey into greater sexual agency.
The first shows Lucija kissing a lifesize statue of the virgin Mary, her creative dodge of a dare to kiss the most beautiful girl in the convent where she and her choral classmates are on training retreat. The second sees Lucija and classmate Ana-Marija (Mina Švajger) practicing kissing their hands as the backs of their kissed hands touch and the girls stare into each other's eyes. Finally, the most surprising and palpable of the images is an extended tight hold on Lucija's shoulder and neck as she masturbates in a bathroom stall after an erotically overwhelming encounter with one of the laborers (Casson Matia) renovating the convent.
The film's fierce bisexuality is also cause for celebration, Lucija loses herself just as easily in gazing at the laborer's muscular arm when he saws as a glimpse of Ana-Marija's bellybutton when the girls change in their shared room. Djukić makes the classic bisexual experience of ogling the opposite gender together to avoid addressing same-gender attraction into a key piece of Lucija and Ana-Marija's developing relationship. In fact, she pushes it a step further by having the shared opposite-gender attraction be a step towards addressing the same gender attraction when Ana-Marija steals the laborer's sweaty shirt and gives it to Lucija.
Little Trouble Girls doesn't skimp on the Catholicism either. More than a titillating backdrop, the convent and training in specifically religious music offer Djukić the opportunity to hit upon some potent if not entirely unique themes.
When Ana-Marija steals the shirt and offers it to Lucija, the latter asks "isn't it a sin?" The more adventurous girl replies that they can eat sour grapes (which are handily available in the convent's garden) to atone. The concept of sinning then simply (if not easily) atoning is already very Catholic, but when Ana-Marija stops Lucija from spitting out the face-puckering grapes by telling her "if you don't suffer it won't work," the scene reaches almost peak Catholicism.
Another scene has the two leads make the most of helping a nun, Sister Magda (Saša Pavček) as she puts up curtains, so the workers cannot see the teenagers during their rehearsals. When the bold teens ask her about celibacy, the nun responds with a genuine answer about the transience of human touch and the permanent satisfaction of god's touch.
The answer is made all the more meaningful and perhaps unwittingly harmful given that she frankly acknowledges the reality of temptation. While Sister Magda does not mean to be judgmental, the inherent denigration of the flesh in her comment and the kindness with which it's delivered highlight how ubiquitous and firmly entrenched the shame of being embodied is for many Catholic women.
While Sister Magda's thematic touch on shame and guilt is indirect, the choir's conductor and voice teacher (Saša Tabaković) explicitly reminds us of the controlling impulses of organized religion. At one point he tells Lucija, "a choir is a joint formation, if one of you doesn't conform it'll fall apart." It's a demand to fall in line not only for the music, but also the organization that music serves.
Not bound by religion though, is the teacher's plausibly deniable advance on Lucija. He invites her to sit next to him at a piano and urges her, with a shoulder nudge, to confide in him. When she opens up and he doesn't like what he hears, as it's a clear (albeit unknowing) rebuff of his advance, he grows cruel, leading to a scene that can't help but bring to mind that other big splash of a debut Whiplash.
Little Trouble Girls is a remarkable movie that draws viewers into its character's psyche with brilliant and beautiful filmmaking, which promises an exciting career for Djukić. It's easy to see why it's Slovenia's entry for Best International Feature, and I hope it receives the nomination it deserves.
The film opens Friday, December 5, in New York, and Friday, December 12, in Los Angeles, only in movie theaters, via Kino Lorber. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.