Miller's Girl

This was fantastically tasteful and deep as it follows a prodigy young female high school student who has everything but a physical affair with her english teacher which is built equally by both as the film has a Fifty Shades of Grey vibe but in literary form. The intensity of the literature jargon between the two, the filming that makes some scenes seem blurred between reality and fantasy, and the intense acting is what makes it an edge of your seat watch. All in all though this is such a unique stand alone film that is unlike any other.

Imagine a relationship between a teacher and his student.

The story follows Cairo Sweet, a talented young student with a gift for writing, and her English teacher, Mr. Miller, who is captivated by her intellect and insight—especially after discovering that she read his critically panned book, which had discouraged him from writing and pushed him into teaching instead.

On the other hand, Cairo starts to believe her teacher has feelings for her because of how differently he treats her—his subtle gestures and attention. She's also clearly attracted to him, despite the fact that she's only 18 and he's at least 30 years older. The central question becomes: What will she do, and how will she confess her feelings?

The story is strong, and the acting is excellent, particularly by Jena Ortega, who delivers a performance that's deeply engaging. After being pulled from the upcoming Scream sequel, Ortega proves her range with this dramatic role. The film presents a thought-provoking narrative, rich in character development and psychological nuance, especially through Cairo’s sometimes twisted perspective.

The cinematography is beautiful, and the writing is sharp, but the pacing suffers—the film feels draggy and uneven at times, which might test the patience of some viewers.

Age Rating: 18+
Film Rating: 8/10

I enjoyed this one, the acting was great, the tempo, the mood, the characters, everything worked for me, only the end felt incomplete.

_Please note: If some sentences of my review do not make sense, it's because I quickly translated it (it's not allowed to write non-english reviews here)_


**_‘Miller's Girl’_ is a film you read, a book you watch.**

It's like a dream, a fairy tale, or a play. Everything seems surreal: the school, the student-teacher relationship, the cliché of the failed writer turned teacher. The story follows Cairo (Jenna Ortega), a high school student living alone in a mansion – whose wealthy lawyer parents have gone abroad – who decides to find a challenge to overcome in order to write her essay for her college application.

An ambiguous friendship quickly develops between her and her literature teacher. This film shows us a teenager taking power and seducing her teacher without any sex scenes. No, because if there is a sex scene, it is epistolary. The direction draws us into an atmosphere of seduction and tension. The subtlety of each scene paradoxically becomes powerful (such as a shared cigarette or one character quoting the other's writings). We can only praise Jenna Ortega's acting. A smile, a glance is all it takes for her to dominate the scene. J. Ortega manages to make us forget her "angel face" to reveal the face of a woman who knows what she wants, a woman of power, a dominant woman. The scene between Cairo and Miller on the stage is of rare intensity (considering the last films I've seen). The shot shows us an all-powerful Cairo, visually and mentally dominating the teacher.

A film that, according to critics, cannot please everyone. Those, on the contrary, who will appreciate the direction and the story, will leave this film in the same way that one closes a book. We were captivated by the story all along until the credits pulled us out of our hypnosis and brought us back to reality.

As others have mentioned here, the cinematography of this movie is fantastic. Every single scene/set has been setup in such a way that while the characters are acting out the story, there are visually interesting things in the background. From furniture to wall art and in some cases a landscape seen through a window which seems to have been thoughtfully planned and put in place. Then there’s Jenna Ortega and her performance. All of this makes the movie worth watching, even though the story itself is average.

The film was very subtle, with a strong literary foundation. Ortega portrays her role exceptionally well. I also appreciated the film's sound, which truly captivated the audience.

Rather odd, yet just narrowly works... I think.

The performances of Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman are two that I found entertaining. I'm usually nonplussed by the latter actor, I tend to find him quite mid in terms of acting but this is probably the most I've enjoyed him throughout the entire run time of a movie; he has better roles, sure, but purely on his delivery etc. this is a good showing of his.

'Miller’s Girl' does deliver a strange story, one that does feel quite amateurly written and one that's deseprate to be salacious. For an "erotic thriller", it doesn't really show all that much - if, admittedly, that's for the best in this regard. I will say, though, that Ortega and Freeman play it all off well enough though, which is probably why I didn't hate it.

I'm not surprised to see it tank on Letterboxd, even if I'm evidently not someone who feels as negatively as a load of others do about this 2024 flick. I do tend to give movies with good performances a pass as they can mask any other misgivings, so that ought to explain it.

Arthur Dent finally got laid.

Great writing and cinematography, but if Jenna Ortega wasn't in this it wouldn't be watched.
Is it worth watching, once at most.

I thought it was good but could have been better. There was a lot of buildup but the ending wasn't very satisfactory (I was at an 7 or 8/10 until the end) and was somewhat abrupt. Soundtrack was really good, southern accents were mid, and while it was pretentious that didn't really effect my view of the movie.

Plotwise it's slightly ambiguous in what actually happened versus fantasy in the relationship of Cairo and Jonathan. Regardless the relationship was inappropriate but the question is was it to such a degree that it made sense for [spoiler]Cairo to go scorched earth[/spoiler] [spoiler]once she is rejected.[/spoiler]