THE film Little Trouble Girls (Cert.15) features the Letter to the Ephesians’ instruction to put away the old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts. The setting is a Slovenian Roman Catholic girls’ school. Pupils travel to a convent in rural Italy for a choir retreat. This includes Lucija (Jara Sofija Ostan), at 16 still young for her age and bashful. She is allocated a dormitory with three more worldly-wise girls. A somewhat predatory investigation into her feelings about sex ensues.
Cue a polemic against Catholic mortification of the flesh, especially after one of the film’s flights of fantasy is a painting of a vagina superimposed on a reredos? Not so. In imparting their (admittedly limited) knowledge of sex, Lucija’s roommates may well be doing this innocent a favour. More disturbing are the antics of Ana-Marija (Mina Švajger), the group’s ringleader, forever goading this ingénue into dares beyond Lucija’s comfort zone. One such venture is demanding that she kiss the most beautiful girl here. Much to Ana-Marija’s disappointment, her protégé does this to the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The director, Urška Djukic, has said that she wanted her film to explore the mysteries of the senses as tools for understanding ourselves. The concept of sinful sexuality and the lack of education around it, she suggests, disconnect individuals from their inner source of power. Superficially, Ana-Marija is Djukic’s mouthpiece, but the character with her lived-in face and delinquent disregard for others’ feelings and views is deeply unattractive. Instead, the director makes Lucija the more sympathetic character. Her disposition, naïve as it is, assists in a gentle sexual awakening.
She and Ana-Marija ask Sister Magda (Saša Pavcek) what celibacy is like. She touchingly asserts you have to redirect your energy into work and creativity. “You gift your body to Christ and God’s word fills you.” God’s touch, unlike that of humans, isn’t transient, but eternal. Ana-Marija subsequently mocks this attitude, whereas her companion, when she can get a word in, wishes to consider its possibilities. It is the beginning of the end of their friendship, finally sealed by Ana-Marija’s unwanted advances.
Lucija discloses this to the choirmaster (Saša Tabakovic), who dismisses her concerns before breaking her confidences by revealing them to the other three girls. Not only that: he starts humiliating Lucija during rehearsals. This is where Lucija epitomises Djukic’s use of the senses as tools for understanding herself. An inner source of power comes into its own. Earlier, Ana-Marija regards eating sour grapes as sufficient atonement for repeated misbehaviour, whereas Lucija is able to enjoy the sweetest of grapes as she embraces God-given opportunities to glory in her sexuality.
In a film packed with fine performances, there is an air of exultation provided by the singers’ ethereal harmonies, albeit achieved through painful endeavour — and also in those moments when Lucija finds solace contemplating the convent’s olive tree, which symbolises the prospect of peace. There are scenes in which the tree surreally emits light amid darkness. Olive in Greek means to shine — which is exactly what this young Christian does as she strives to engage with her new-found sensuality appropriately.