Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Little Trouble Girls’ Review: A Sly, Sensual Debut Teases Out the Carnal Urges Behind a Prim Choirgirl Facade
The Sonic Youth song that lends “Little Trouble Girls” its title plays out over the closing credits, its English-language lyrics neatly encapsulating the fidgety frustrations at play in Urška Djukić’s debut feature: “If you want me to/I will be the one/That is always good/And you’ll love me too/But you’ll never know/What I feel inside/That I’m really bad.” A shade too neatly, perhaps, since everything else in this sly, sensual coming-of-ager is so headily and tantalizingly allusive, as the film sharply evokes that adolescent age where worldly adult knowledge is just within view and just out of reach. Following a shy 16-year-old on a girls’ choir trip that exposes both her sexual naïveté and her deep, inchoate yearnings, this is a striking statement of intent from its Slovenian writer-director — there’s an airy delicacy here that invites comparisons to early Céline Sciamma, but with its own raw, restless edge.
Premiering as the opening film in the Berlinale’s new Perspectives competition for first features — kicking off what will no doubt be a busy international festival run — “Little Trouble Girls” builds on the frank feminine perspective and off-kilter humor featured in Djukić’s short-form work, most notably her 2021 title “Granny’s Sexual Life,” which won both a César and a European Film Award. Nothing in this quiet hothouse of youthful desires, mean-girl tensions and hovering Catholic guilt qualifies as especially new terrain, but the film’s dreamy-yet-gawky carnality and honestly juvenile point of view feel fresh just the same. Arthouse distribution beckons, but one hopes the film connects with young female viewers who might just watch it and feel uncommonly understood.
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With her nervous, wide-eyed gaze and a wardrobe that reads a little younger than many of her peers, Lucia (wonderfully played by newcomer Jara Sofija Ostan) projects an immediate vulnerability that triggers protective instincts in some and aggressive ones in others. Or both, in the case of Ana-Maria (Mina Švajger), a popular, slightly older girl at Lucia’s buttoned-up Catholic school, who radiates the kind of feline flirtatiousness with all and sundry that can be copied, but not quite taught. The girls are both members of the school’s choir, a traditionalist institution overseen with fastidious strictness by conductor Bojan (Saša Tabaković), whose preferred repertoire of dusty hymns and local folk songs gives the girls a collective air of ethereal purity when singing. When the choirgirl robes are shed, needless to say, it’s another story.
A newish arrival to the group, Lucia is grateful to be swiftly befriended by Ana-Maria. After initially bonding over lipstick — still verboten by Lucia’s straitlaced, world-weary mother (Nataša Burger) — she’s drawn into Ana-Maria’s admiring circle of friends, and feels the benefits early: While other girls snicker when Lucia admits she’s never had her period, the queen bee graciously defends her from mockery. But Ana-Maria can tease and taunt with the best of them, as becomes increasingly apparent when the choir travels to a scenic rural convent for a weekend of rigorous rehearsals — that turns out to be an intricate series of social challenges and mind games for the still-introverted newcomer. A group of brawny construction workers happens to renovating the convent at the same time; it doesn’t take Ana-Maria long to follow Lucia’s gaze toward the studliest man in the crew, and gently goad her into some bad-girl behavior.
“Little Trouble Girls” isn’t a film of lurid provocations or sadistic punishments: Though its perspective is mostly aligned with Lucia’s tense, virginal uncertainty, Djukić and Maria Bohr retain some sympathy for Ana-Maria’s mischievous manipulations, which speak of their own innocence and tremulous teenage anxiety. Both young actors are superb, each zigzagging along that fine line between immature posturing and actual, exhilarating self-realization, evoking that transitional stage through which girls like them can often seem at least three ages at once. The writing fizzes with the giddy conversational rhythms and savage banter of the generation under scrutiny, but occasionally surprises with an earnest, pensive digression: The film takes seriously, even philosophically, Lucia’s struggle to reconcile her emerging libido with a Catholic faith she’s more or less taken as given until now.
The filmmaking is accordingly lithe and light in touch, building an atmosphere buoyant with summery possibilities. Most impressive is Julij Zornik’s starkly subjective sound design, which selectively amplifies breathing, chewing or other misophonic triggers to immerse us in Lucia’s uneasy headspace, and Vlado Gojun’s crackling editing, which is likewise attuned to her antic state of mind. When carnal thoughts surge or overwhelm her, they trigger rapid time-lapse montages of flowers in bloom — a clichéd image for sexual awareness, one might think, but wholly in keeping with the character’s limited experience of the world. “Little Trouble Girls” deftly returns us to a developmental tipping point where everything is new, alluring and frightening for its young protagonist, and we hold our breath with her.
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