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High school students often have a favorite teacher—one who inspires them to learn and grow in ways they didn’t expect. But in Miller’s Girl, the relationship between a gifted student and her favorite teacher turns dangerous when she begins working on a special assignment.
Miller’s Girl stars Jenna Ortega as Cairo Sweet, a lonely teenager from small-town Tennessee who’s been living alone in a grand (and reportedly haunted) ancestral estate while her lawyer parents travel the globe. To combat her loneliness and teen angst, she’s buried herself in literature—which is why she’s drawn to creative writing teacher Jon Miller (Martin Freeman). Mr. Miller is flattered by his talented (and pretty) student’s interest in him and his work—but when he gives her an extra writing assignment to help her with her college applications, he ends up playing with fire.
From the beginning of this dark and seductive drama, it’s obvious that this teacher-student relationship is heading into dangerous territory. Freeman’s Miller may start out as a likable character—the kind whose class would be a favorite among English students. But he’s too easily caught up in his student’s admiration and her passion for the written word—and his failure to keep their relationship strictly professional quickly strips him of his likability.
Ortega’s Cairo is as moody and mysterious as you’d expect from the young actress. She sees herself as a tragic character: too smart, too worldly, too mature for this small-town tedium. And her fascination with her published author teacher turns into something more when her best friend points out their mutual interest and encourages her to seduce him, just as she’s trying to seduce another unsuspecting teacher.
Writer/director Jade Halley Bartlett sets out to challenge viewers with this complicated relationship between two characters who both cross the line in their own ways. But the film seems to be as overconfident in its own brilliance as Cairo does. There’s just so much here that doesn’t work—from Cairo’s pretentious writing style to Miller’s laughably over-the-top alcoholic wife (Dagmara Dominczyk). And though it certainly shows promise, it’s hard to like either of these characters—or to care how their story ends.
The relationship between the teacher and student in Miller’s Girl isn’t exactly new or surprising: a teenage crush that goes too far. And it plays out into a dark and moody and unsurprising story about a couple of stereotypical characters.
You can report to class with this teacher and student when Miller’s Girl arrives in theaters on January 26, 2024.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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