Miller's Girl (2024)
Directed by Jade Halley Bartlett
Written by Jade Halley Bartlett
Starring Jenna Ortega, Martin Freeman, Dagmara Dominiczyk
Release Date January 26th, 2024
Published January 25th, 2024
Ewwwww! The ick is a big feeling throughout the new melodrama, Miller's Girl, an erudite and empty exploration of sexual desire between a teacher and a student. Starring It-Girl Jenna Ortega, Miller's Girl is a double entendre. The title refers to both author Henry Miller and his endlessly horny catalog of books and the character played by Martin Freeman, a teacher named Jonathan Miller who is drawn to his student, played by Ortega. It's not a particularly clever double meaning but it's a good try. A lot of filmmakers don't even bother making their title matter to their movie, so, there's that.
Jenna Ortega stars in Miller's Girl as Cairo Sweet, a wise beyond her years High Schooler. Jaded and bored by her Tennessee hometown, and her absent parents, Cairo spends her time reading and developing her skills as a writer. Her hard work pays off when she shows her writing to her new Literature teacher, Mr. Miller (Freeman). Miller is immediately taken with Cairo's writing. That said, he's also impressed with her personal reading which happens to include his only published book. If you are thinking that he's being set up, stop reading ahead!
At home, Mr. Miller is struggling as a writer and a husband. His marriage to Beatrice, a far more successful and prolific author than her husband, is on the rocks. Desperately horny, Mr. Miller can't seem to get his wife away from her publisher long enough for a makeout session and a handjob, let alone the kind of passionate lovemaking that defined the early years of their marriage. Thus, Mr. Miller is ripe for a young woman who reads Henry Miller and proves capable of writing with just as much flushed, engorged, and filthy prose as Henry Miller himself.
