‘Little Trouble Girls’ Review: Between the Virgin and the Flesh

The connection between religiosity and adolescent sexual desire is a well-explored subject in cinema. Film history is filled with works that engage with that tension, with Lucrecia Martel’s The Holy Girl standing as one of the most notable recent examples. I’d wager that Slovenian filmmaker Urška Djukić has seen Martel’s films, because her influence is unmistakable in Little Trouble Girls—and not just thematically. Beyond the subject matter, Djukić’s formal choices share several points of contact with Martel’s style. But this is not an imitation, not even remotely. Djukić’s film earns its value on its own terms, managing to translate into images, sounds and sensations the inner life of its teenage protagonists.

The main character, Lucía, is sixteen and has recently arrived at a Catholic school. Although she’s shy and solitary, she quickly finds her way into a small group of friends led by Ana-María, who is more outgoing and, in her own way, more relaxed. Alongside her—and many others—Lucía sings in a beautifully assembled all-female choir whose conductor has organized a weekend trip. The entire group will head to a convent for a couple of days of rehearsal and practice.

Once they arrive, the girls realize that singing won’t be easy: a group of construction workers is restoring the convent, filling the place with a deafening racket. Between musical sessions (the film features many, and they’re all beautifully executed), shared meals, and little excursions, Lucía, Ana-María, and their friends begin to take an interest in the workers—especially one of them, young and lanky. Playfully mischievous, they steal his clothes and spy on him as the men head down to the river for a swim.

In their private conversations, the girls start talking about sex and revealing small secrets. The crucial difference between Lucía and the others is that she’s just as—if not more—captivated by the convent itself, by the religious imagery, and by the sense of divine connection described by the nuns as she is by the young worker. In fact, if anything stirs her sexually, it’s her friend more than the boy everyone else seems to be after.

Little Trouble Girls recounts those intense days at the convent—days in which tensions begin to rise among the girls, but also between Lucía and her teacher, as she tries to decipher what’s happening inside her, what stirs her sexually and emotionally. The director lingers on small details, frames scenes with curious, precise compositions (one of them involving an intimate moment), and places the camera close enough to the girls’ faces to catch every pore as they talk, lean toward one another, sing, and gaze at either the workers or the statues of the Virgin with almost the same devotion.

A beautifully inspired coming-of-age film, Djukić’s work does use the Sonic Youth song referenced in its title, but its primary soundtrack is built around the religious pieces the girls perform with the choir. That sacred musicality gives Little Trouble Girls an almost imposing tone, one that contrasts strikingly with the more earthly concerns of these teenagers who are discovering the world and trying to understand where they belong in it.