Miller’s Girl is bolstered, but not exactly strengthened, by its pair of central performances and improved, but not provided any real depth, by its ear for frank dialogue. It’s yet another in a long line of psychosexual thrillers of the “…from Hell” variety, in which an apparently innocent young woman deceives and cons her way into the good graces of an unsuspecting, theoretically more intelligent mark. There is nothing particularly special about this variation on the formula, which pits an English professor against a smitten student, even though one can tangibly sense actors Martin Freeman and Jenna Ortega fighting against writer/director Jade Halley Bartlett’s dedication to that formula.
There is a lot of potential here, as there always is in these movies, for an exploration of the kind of sexual tryst that develops between Freeman’s Jonathan Miller and Ortega’s Cairo Sweet (and Bartlett gets extra points for the enjoyable naming of these characters, of course). This is a curious and inspired choice of casting two actors whom one would not immediately think to pair together. It does make sense, though: Freeman often plays unassuming men who must talk their way into (or out of) understanding whatever confusing situation in which they find themselves, and Ortega, already a veteran of “eye acting,” has an intense gaze that suggests gears are always turning behind eyes drinking in everything they observe.
These could be their literal character descriptions, too. Each one is involved in a romantic relationship of their own when we meet them. Jonathan is married to Beatrice (Dagmara Domińczyk), but unhappily so, as she is bored of his mundane lifestyle, his boring job and his laser-focused attention, not upon their marriage, but upon his students and assignments. Cairo is kind of but also sort of not really semi-dating Winnie Black (Gideon Adlon), and the two are almost locked into a longstanding, unspoken competition of Truth or Dare, as both of them are enamored with teachers at the school – Winnie with Mr. Fillmore (Bashir Salahuddin) and, of course, Cairo with Mr. Miller.
An opportunity quickly emerges for Cairo to set her trap: Jonathan assigns a creative writing exercise, and Cairo, having studied her prey, pens a story of graphic sexual gratification (perhaps so that we can hear a very quick succession of uniquely vulgar sentences narrated, again, by this most curious pair of actors) that upsets Jonathan to the point of threatening failure. Away from this scheme, each of their own romantic partners begins to feel the strain of secrecy and scandal that emerges as Cairo makes a public spectacle of things and Jonathan attempts to keep it all under the radar.
This is where the sense of formula really develops and Miller’s Girl begins to lose its way. We can appreciate the verbose introductions to and between these characters, mostly because of Freeman and Ortega and their inherent skill as actors. The screenplay, though, keeps reining in the ability for these characters to grow beyond our basic understanding of them as hapless victim and conniving predator. By the time the film reaches a last look between these two characters, which suggests a level of understanding not reached by the preceding hour and a half, it has become difficult to care.
Photo courtesy of Lionsgate
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