Little girl is a story of sexual fantasy come true.
For screenwriter and director Halina Reijn, it was also an opportunity to delve deeper into the story of a leading role in Nicole Kidmancareer, Eyes wide closedIt is Alice Harford. In the Stanley Kubrick film, Alice tells her husband, William (Tom Cruise), about a sexual fantasy she had about running away with a man she saw while they were on vacation.
This admission sends William into a spiral, leading him down a dangerous path involving sex cults and murder. But the Dutch filmmaker always wondered what the film in which Alice actually acted out her fantasy might look like – this is what she wrote Little girl.
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“It’s about marriage, it’s about monogamy,” she says of both films. “What is monogamy and can you own someone else or do you have to set them free?”
The difference, however, is that in Eyes wide closed“We follow Tom Cruise everywhere,” continues Reijn. “We don’t even know what (Alice) is going through. We’re totally in her mind and her heart and her soul. I want to know, ‘What if she had gone and actually lived out her fantasy?’ ‘It is what it is – my response, playful and humble, to the male Eyes wide closed… All of us women are ready and eager to see and hear stories about how we feel and from our perspective. »
Reijn also wrote Samuel (Harris Dickinson), Romy, Kidman’s intern, has an affair with a deliberately fantastical being, much like the one in Alice’s imaginings in Eyes closed wide. “It’s my playful revenge on all the films directed by men in which all these women are either femmes fatales or Lolitas,” says Reijn. “(Samuel gets) a fairytale introduction. So, I almost want people to ask, ‘Is this real or is she imagining it?’ Because we begin and end the film with orgasms, we can see the whole film as a metaphor for a great sexual fantasy.
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Eyes wide closed also helped Reijn cope with an unexpected schedule change. She planned to shoot Little girl during the summer, but Hollywood’s twin strikes pushed production back to the winter. “My movie was a summer movie and it all took place in the Hamptons,” she notes. “But then the strike hit us and I had to postpone it until Christmas. I was very frustrated, to be honest with you, and very sad. I was thinking about the white picket fence, about the Hamptons, The Truman Show. But then I saw again Eyes wide closed, and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s possible.’ You can make a really beautiful, deep film with Christmas songs and trees and Christmas carols.'”
Reijn, also known for her acting work in mainly European productions, also drew inspiration from Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen’s play which Antonio Banderas“The character, Jacob, leads in Little girl. She uses the piece both as a way to signal that Jacob does not understand his wife Romy’s desires, but also as a rebuttal to what she says about women pursuing their own liberation.
“Who is Hedda Gabler now?” » asks Reijn. “Ultimately, it’s about a woman who destroys her life to be reborn. My film is my version of Hedda Gabler. Romy thinks she’s stuck in a marriage. But ultimately, she’s just trapped in herself, which is Hedda Gabler. But in our film, she chooses to live and she doesn’t commit suicide. As a theater actress, I was very frustrated that all the characters I played who were seeking freedom ended up dead. I was so tired of this. We want to see a woman who breaks free and continues to live.”
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Reijn may have found inspiration in many stories, but what is unique to him is his decision to make this erotic tale a film that actually features very little nudity. “I play with taboos, I am provocative and I want to provoke a debate on sexuality and freedom,” she says. “But at most you see two very short clips of an actual sexual act. The rest is just suggestion.”
It was a choice based largely on Reijn’s own acting career. “I was naked as an actress in every movie, in every play,” she explains. “I was done. I wanted to create a sex film in which we don’t show anything, but yet it’s super central. We show bodies, but it’s very elegant and graceful. You barely see anything. It’s done in a way where it hopefully connects to other women. That’s how women see sex.”
Indeed, Reijn thinks the sexiest and most provocative scene of all has nothing to do with naked bodies. “I find the most shocking scene is when he orders her milk, she drinks the whole glass and he says, ‘Good girl,'” she notes. “They don’t even touch each other. To me, that’s super exciting. Because, for women, it’s often all about the story. It’s about what we have in mind. We don’t like that two bodies collide with each other. It doesn’t mean anything to us. We need a whole prequel of chapters and stories, and that’s what I’m trying to do with the film.
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In addition to forgoing explicit nudity, Reijn also didn’t want the dominance and submission of Romy and Samuel’s relationship to be tied to one pervert or community. She wanted every woman in the audience to be able to relate to Romy’s struggle to express her desires, whatever they may be.
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“It’s not really about the specifics of what BDSM is,” says Reijn. “Personally, I always had these fantasies. And when I went to therapy when I was young, it was still (considered) an illness. It made me feel so alone. I did a lot of research with this – and I kind of like it’s a bit of a power play, but I don’t like a whip and a blindfold It scares me. I wanted it to be a movie where sexuality. specific that they share is a metaphor for everything sexual fantasy. that anyone can have. We feel our own hunger, our own desire, we immediately feel shame.
Little girl hits theaters on Christmas Day.