“Moody, sensual, full of deeper meaning and ripe with possibilities, yet we are left to make up our own mind at the end of it.”

At first glance Urška Djukić’s Little Trouble Girls reminded me of 2015’s Mustang. As with Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s effort, this too is an impressive feature debut and tells the story of a group of girls coming of age together. But that is where the similarities end. Slovenian director Djukić’s film depicts a moment in time, when 16-year-old shy Lucia meets flirty and outgoing Ana-Maria, and from that moment onward sets off on a series of rites of passage into adulthood, which then take her to a self-realization which I did not see coming!  

Djukić’s short animated 2021 film Granny’s Sexual Life, based on the anonymous testimonials gathered by Milena Miklavčič in the book Fire, Ass and Snakes Are Not Toys, has won over 50 awards, including the European Film Academy Award for best short film in 2022 and the 2023 Cesar Award for best animated short film. Much like in her short, Little Trouble Girls also deals with the issues of Catholic guilt in women, and how sex and women’s pleasure are considered sins in the Church. So how does a young girl, with the help of an older, wiser schoolmate, deal with her first urges? 

It does help that both actresses, Jara Sofija Ostan as Lucia and Mina Švajger as the more seasoned Ana-Maria, are phenomenal talents that are natural and expressive at once, conveying the nuances of what many may think is just playing themselves. But anyone who has tried to act before, even in front of a mirror, knows just how difficult ‘acting natural’ is, and these two have it down to a T. 

When Lucia joins her Catholic school’s all-girls choir, she befriends a much more outspoken and wild Ana-Maria, who pushes Lucia to the edge of her comfort zone. On a choir trip to a countryside convent for a weekend of intensive rehearsals, the girls bond and play, as teenagers often do. They also interact with Sister Magda (played by Saša Pavček), who honestly and candidly discloses her own struggle with faith and what she has had to renounce as a nun, creating one of the film’s most spellbinding scenes. 

Lucia is also experiencing what seems like her first crush, on a brown-eyed construction worker who is helping to fix up the convent along with a few other, less attractive men. She spies on him from behind trees, photographs him bathing naked in the river, and gets kissing lessons from Ana-Maria, who talks a good talk when it comes to adolescent sensuality. Thrown into the mix is a strange choir conductor, played by an unsettlingly brave Saša Tabaković, whose own sexual repression seems obvious as he stands surrounded by a dozen pretty young girls wearing shorts and skimpy t-shirts. At one point, he senses Lucia’s sexual breakthrough and yells at her to sing better, sing louder, more precisely, which offers yet another breathtaking moment in the film.  

Little Trouble Girls is much like the Sonic Youth song from the late ’90s from which it takes its title, and which plays over the end credits – turning it into a plural ‘girls’ where the song was only about the one girl. Moody, sensual, full of deeper meaning and ripe with possibilities, yet we are left to make up our own mind at the end of it. Did Lucia, or didn’t she? Will she turn to her sexuality or refuse it completely, in favor of a spiritual life? It’s an interesting concept, beautifully shot by fellow Slovenian DoP Lev Predan Kowarski, and audiences will love diving into this film that makes us feel as if we are part of the singing group, seeing things from an invisible singer’s POV. This adds a layer of cinematic magic, and there are a few brilliant forces at play in this film, but ultimately, an actual story never takes off completely.