Little Trouble Girls review – monstrous choirmaster spikes a sublime Catholic coming-of-age tale

Utterly absorbing Slovenian debut reinvents the cliched idea of a Catholic girl’s sexual awakening, and proves that no teacher can be as cruel as a music teacher This elegant and mysterious debut from Slovenian director Urška Djukić, with its superb musical score and sound design, reinvents the cliched idea of a Catholic girl’s sexual awakening. It’s also proof, if proof were needed, that no teacher in the world can be as cruel and abusive as a music teacher. We have already seen JK Simmons’ terrifying jazz instructor in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash and Isabelle Huppert’s keyboard monster in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher; now there is Slovenian actor and musician Saša Tabaković playing a demanding, yet insidious choirmaster in charge of a group of talented, vulnerable teenage girls. The film incidentally has a lesson for any teenage person watching: if a music teacher asks you to sit next to them on the piano stool with no one else in the room and murmurs “You can confide in me” … ...

Film: Wendy Ide’s 10 best of 2023

From a struggling mother to a monstrous maestro, the year was notable for superb performances by veterans and newcomers

1. Tár
Released in the UK in January
It’s been a banner year for fans of films about mercurial conductors/composers, with Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s mosaic portrait of Leonard Bernstein, a 2023 highlight. But Todd Field’s creation of the magnificent, monstrous fictional conductor Lydia Tár, inhabited down to the last shred of cruelty and ambition by the remarkable Cate Blanchett, is exceptional: a savage, slippery account of rampant narcissism brought down to earth.

2. How to Have Sex
November
A wealth of outstanding British first features has included Rye Lane (directed by Raine Allen-Miller), Scrapper (Charlotte Regan) and Earth Mama (Savanah Leaf) – and there are more to come in 2024. But Molly Manning Walker’s phenomenal How to Have Sex is the standout, for its visual flair, superb performances and for the crucial conversations about consent that it has prompted.

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