It Felt Like Love (2014)

So much average

Great Film overall

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I watched this after having watched "Beach Rats" (which I absolutely loved and can't recommend enough) because I found Eliza Hittman to be a great storyteller and director. This movie definitely feels like a long lost cousin of "Beach Rats" and even though it gave off the same feel as BR did, I didn't find it nearly as good. To say that Eliza Hittman improved her cinematography skills would be an understatement. She definitely stayed true to the way she directs and writes these movies, and if I am to see her work again, I'll definitely recognise it.The actors delivered great performances, with such depth, that by not saying much you could understand them perfectly. This movie is definitely very slow-paced and there's not as much plot as there is thought and feeling. What first popped into mind while I was watching this was that it resembled a short-story, or rather an adaptation of one, rather than one of a novel.It still was absolutely stunning, even though, as I have already said, there was something I didn't quite like about it although I can't put my finger on it. If you want something similar, yet better and definitely more original (yes, originality was something this movie lacked) watch Beach Rats, so much better.

"It Felt Like Love" is first-time writer-director Eliza Hittman's coming-of-age meditation on a Brooklyn teenager's burgeoning sexuality. The teenager in question is Lila who lives with her permissive, aging hippie of a father and occasionally brags about imaginary sexual exploits to Nate, a boy who lives in the neighborhood. The mother is not a factor, having died of cancer some years before.Lila spends most of her time with her good friend Chiara and her boyfriend, Patrick. While with them at the beach, she makes the acquaintance of Sammy, an older college student who she ends up pursuing. When Sammy gets drunk and passes out, Lila crawls into bed with him. The next morning Sammy can't remember anything and Lila implies that maybe they had sex together.Mike D'Angelo, writing in "Dissolve," bemoans the generic nature of the world Lila inhabits: "Lila exists in an art-movie void, with no friends or interests that don't directly reflect her predicament; the film is set in the present (characters text each other, etc.), but so strenuously avoids any sort of cultural specificity that just a few revisions could shift it to 1987…That sort of sparseness can be deliberate—a means of conveying timelessness—but here it just seems like a failure of imagination, turning Lila into an emblem rather than a girl."Eventually Lila finds herself over her head when she finds herself alone with the older guys. Matt Seitz of "RogerEbert.com" describes the encounter but remains dissatisfied: "Several scenes in which Lila hangs out with Sammy and his buddies in a man-cave are mortifying. She is clearly an interloper, and they treat her like one, and somehow their snickering indifference and dimwit innuendo are part of the male-female dance in this world. Lila's closed-off expressions suggest that she if not welcomes, at least expects to be treated with contempt. These rec room scenes rank with the most pessimistic depictions of teen sexuality in recent cinema. Yet however heartfelt and keenly observed this pessimism is, it becomes monotonous. A.A. Dowd of the "A.V. Club" gets to the essence of "It Felt Like Love's" limitations: "Lila, for all the authentic awkwardness Piersanti breathes into her, is defined so entirely by her mission—embarked upon with an equal measure of anxiety and anticipation—that she never quite comes alive as a character.""It Felt Like Love" has some impressive cinematography but Ms. Hittman's one-note portrait of teenage obsession, prevents us from believing that these are real people. Nonetheless, I see good things for this director in the future, as this film still shows potential.

Hittman's beautifully composed sequences could function as still photographs. Not a good choice for a casual viewer looking for a "Spring Breakers" thrill, Hittman's film puts a very fine point on the heavy, achingly quiet loneliness of adolescent girlhood. Certainly not an experience shared by all, it will still resonate with some: fourteen year old Lila navigates Brooklyn neighborhoods both alone and with her best friend two years her senior, Chiara. In the sweaty late summer nights, she boasts untruths to her younger neighbor and frequently finds herself a third wheel with Chiara and her boyfriend. She chooses to focus her attention upon the older Sammy, a local college kid who grudgingly lets Lila insert herself into his hard-partying scene.Ebert, in his review, compared the film to the oeuvre of Larry Clark and Harmony Korine: "Clark and Korine's work, whatever their other virtues, often seem to take place in a universe of users and abusers that's devoid of real love, indeed any possibility of anything but a fleeting connection. " It is an apt comparison. It isn't obvious what Lila is looking for, and we as the audience aren't sure if she got what she wanted, either.

When many filmmakers approach the young girl searching for love story, they tend to turn it into a game where the young female protagonist's objective is catching the guy, through cute and sometimes provocative means. It's the tried and true teen movie structure—awkward girl transforms herself to be the object of desire for the popular, more sexually advanced male. But what happens when real girls internalize that model as they explore their own sexuality and adulthood? What happens when you take that off the Hollywood stage and situate a film in the often-overlooked working class Brooklyn? Eliza Hittman's film, It Felt Like Love, deftly is walks the line between potentially dangerous consequences of the girl transforming herself for the male gaze and sex object and the rite of passage that is discovering one's own sexuality and the often awkward and mortifying route that discovery can take. The film opens with long, dialogue-less shots of a day at the beach for Gina Piersanti's young, inexperienced Lila. She has tagged along with her seemingly more mature friend, Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni) and Chiara's boyfriend. While the couple has wandered into a house, Lila is left to her own devices. The camera sometimes takes on her point of view as she investigates her surroundings, where the audience has the opportunity to return to their youth and inexperience. Other times, the camera lingers over Lila. While in less adept hands this lingering could be potentially cloying and sentimental, Hittman uses these shots to establish the dichotomy between Lila and the majority of her audience. While the audience may have been young once, this is a different generation whose own rite of passage is unique to their time. These shots of Lila, therefore, establish the difference between her youth and our experience. Much of the tension of the film resides here, since we watch Lila insinuate herself into increasingly, potentially dangerous situations and are unable to do anything about it. It is clear from the start that Lila is envious of the more mature Chiara, as her friend seems to be maturing as our society suggests a young female should—using her sex to hold onto the guy, being the sex object he desires. Chiara's current boyfriend is jealous that there have been other boys before him; however, it is unclear if this is factual or not as the camera focuses on Chiara's face when they discuss this. In this scene, in particular, the actors' subtle performances are crucial in establishing the ambiguity. It's a double-edged sword for the character. If she confirms that she is not a virgin, then she's the whore and less desirable to her boyfriend; while on the other hand if she says she is a virgin, then she's less sexually experienced and desirable. While Chiara's boyfriend is her age, Lila has set her sights upon an older acquaintance of Chiara's, Sammy (Ronen Rubenstein). She goes through the motions of what she believes maturity to look like, but the plans she devises to see him and get his attention reveals her youth. She packs a bag of groceries and pretends to be in his neighborhood, when she stops by the bowling alley he works at. She tries the cliché smoking of a cigarette to be perceived as older (it's cliché precisely because it is not only so common place in depictions of youth but also because it is the go-to standard for youth's perception of adulthood). It feels as if Lila has a checklist of what it means to be an adult, and she's running through the pieces one by one. As she moves along this checklist, Lila puts herself in situations that are cringe-worthy at the very least and potentially dangerous. One of the most pivotal and challenging scenes comes when Lila has invited herself to Sammy's apartment. It is in this scene in particular where Hittman's work as a director shines through. She is able to coax out the performances from the young actors, not just with dialogue, but also their reactions to the dialogue and actions in the scene. Sammy is not alone, hanging out with the guys, smoking weed and drinking beers. Through close-ups of Sammy's face, Hittman seems to suggest that Sammy is aware of Lila's youth and sensitive to it as she tries to prove her sexual experience. However, in front of his friends, Sammy also seems to be pulled toward acting like one of the guys and going along with the act. That tension demonstrates that it is not only young girls trying to navigate the tricky waters of our porn and sex obsessed culture, but young men are also trying to figure out what manhood looks like. While the experience of young adults discovering their own sexual nature is nothing new, what Lila and Sammy (to some extent) seem to be grappling with feels very particular to this moment and time. Just as Larry Clark's Kids examined what the teenage years looked and felt like in a very raw way at the end of the previous century, Hittman explores more specifically the expectations and desires of female adolescence in today's society. The success of It Felt Like Love arises from Hittman's ability to challenge the audience with this depiction, while also creating a thoughtful and honest look at her characters. She not only portrays those difficult and embarrassing aspects, but also the comical and naïve parts of self-discovery. And Hittman does all of this with a beautifully shot, seamless film.