It Felt Like Love

Director: Eliza Hittman
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 1.0

A 14-year-old virgin Lila (Gina Piersanti), jealous/envious of her promiscuous best friend Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni), decides she needs to compete with her and gain sexual experience, even going so far as to chase after a guy in college (Ronen Rubenstein) who seems to be unwilling to deflower her. It exists more in a world of cinema than in actual reality, and Hittman seems to be willingly dismissing basic human psychology: it's Lila's role to look sad, bewildered and consistently make bad decisions (even going so far as to strip naked and sleep next to an indifferent Rubenstein) while her friend Chiara jumps around from boy to boy ("she wants attention"). She's trying for visual poetry, but in order to do that you need characters who are actually alive and real in the first place.