“Little Trouble Girls” is a Piercing Look at Desire and Shame
To grow up is to be confronted with the realization that the way adults explain the world might not be true. It can be jarring when what you thought you knew bears no resemblance to the way things really work. Urška Djukić’s feature directorial debut, Little Trouble Girls, exists during a fleeting stretch of time in a teenage girl’s life. A time when she’s out from under the wing of her mother but still supervised by an adult. It’s a sheltered sense of freedom, but one that allows her to discover who she is.
Sixteen-year-old Lucia (Jara Sofija Ostan) is one of the newest members of a Catholic school choir. From the first rehearsal, it’s clear that Lucia is shy and nonconfrontational, but finds joy in singing. Almost immediately, Lucia notices Ana-Maria (Mina Švajger), a senior and fellow member of the choir. A shared glance and a word or two are all Lucia and Ana-Maria share until the conductor (Saša Tabaković) informs them that the choir will be going on a retreat. The girls are staying at a church that’s undergoing restoration work, and one of the workers (Casson Matia) quickly becomes an object of affection for most of the choir girls. The fascination around this worker creates cracks in the newly formed friendship between Lucia and Ana-Maria.
A scene from Urška Djukić’s Little Trouble Girls
As the choir is part of a Catholic school and the girls are staying at a church while on this retreat, religion plays a large role in Little Trouble Girls. When the conductor explains what makes a choir important, he specifically says that it’s conformity. That the better these girls are able to mold themselves to the expectations of their elders, the better they will be. Of course, anyone who’s been a teenager will let you know that an adult telling you how to act is a fast track to disobedience. Not that anything these girls do is particularly rambunctious in the grand scheme of things, but for their religious upbringing, it’s a bit earth-shattering.
Jara Sofija Ostan as Lucia in a scene from Urška Djukić’s Little Trouble Girls
That’s especially true for Lucia, who quickly realizes how out of her depth she is compared to her classmates. They talk about boys from school they’ve had sex with, masturbation, and kissing with such ease and frivolity that Lucia is wholly astonished. She’s done none of these things, hasn’t even considered them, but between the worker and Ana-Maria, it’s clear that it’s not for lack of desire. That’s the world Little Trouble Girls lives in: the friction of teenage desire coupled with the indoctrination of shame that comes from a strict religious upbringing. Ostan brings a wonderfully nuanced shyness coupled with an eager desire to discover herself. She manages the excitement and the fear of new experiences, emotions, and sensations with such deftness that her performance speaks to this thorny, yet thrilling time of adolescence.
Little Trouble Girls ends with the Sonic Youth song of the same name. The lyrics are, “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.” It’s the perfect summation of everything Little Trouble Girls says thematically. These girls can be good, they can be the model-perfect teenagers adults want them to be, but hiding parts of themselves stokes a fire that will one day burn everything down around them. There’s a bonfire in the hearts of the girls in the choir, one that surely scares the hell out of the adults around them, and they deserve the chance to let it out. It’s terrifying to be sixteen years old, falling into a crush you can’t begin to put into words, and Little Trouble Girls exquisitely captures that stomach-dropping, butterfly-inducing feeling.
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