By: Riley Simpson
Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love is not your typical coming-of-age story.
After a summer of young male-centric tales like The Way, Way Back, The Kings of Summer and Mud, Hittman’s unblinking and harsh film is a shot in the arm to remind audiences that young women grow up, too. And sometimes growing up gets messy.
Love starts with a shy teenager named Lila (played by the doe-eyed Gina Piersanti) staring at the ocean. She’s tentative, backing away from the breaking waves. Lila is also cautious and a little sheltered—she wears a one-piece swimsuit and has a thick layer of sunscreen plastered on her face.
Courtesy of Citizen Jane
Lila is a third wheel to her friend Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni) and her new boyfriend (Jesse Cordasco). She even develops a crush on Sammy (Ronen Rubinstein), a cute guy she met on the beach.
Sounds like the perfect set-up for a cute and playfully awkward tale of how she comes out of her shell over the summer, right?
Hittman’s film doesn’t go for those Hollywood conventions.
Heck, Love is probably closer to the 2010 thriller Black Swan than a normal coming-of-age story. Lila is a young woman who explores her sexuality and kind of goes off the deep end, just like Natalie Portman’s Nina.
The moment Lila washes the sunscreen off her face is when she sheds the protection of being a kid. It’s just like Nina’s clothes darkening from white to black in Black Swan.
The female leads are stark opposites: Chiara is loose and sexual when she rehearses in the girls’ dance group; Lila stumbles through and barely finishes the routine.
Tired of being on the outside looking in, Lila forces interactions with Sammy, hoping to finally have sex like Chiara.
Piersanti captures Lila’s desperation to be seen as a woman. She handles the film’s mature tone with poise, even though she was only 14 while shooting. But her doe eyes also remind us that she’s only a teenager who is still learning.
My one knock on the film is its portrayal of males as ultra-sexist thugs who really mistreat women. The only exceptions to this are Lila’s preteen friend Nate (a caring and innocent Case Prime) and Lila’s father (Kevin Anthony Ryan). But their screen time is limited, leaving Patrick, Sammy and his buddies as alpha male stereotypes. Hittman perfectly encapsulates Lila’s venture into womanhood toward the end in the film’s best scene.
After running from the waves in her one-piece swimsuit and covered in sunscreen, Lila braves the fierce ocean at night and in street clothes, deciding to grow up.
It’s a testament that coming of age isn’t always cute and sweet.
Vox Rating: VVVV
