'It Felt Like Love''s Beautiful, All-Too-Real Take on Adolescent Female Sexuality

Gina Piersanti has one of those faces. It is a face that could be filmed for hours and you would never get tired of it. Piersanti films well, yes, but, moreover, she has an unusual, distinctive face. She is not a great beauty in the traditional sense. She is beautiful as we grow to know her (as some modest friend of yours might grow to be a knockout in your eyes as you begin to realize she’s far more interesting than half the dullards in your life).

Piersanti’s Lila in It Felt Like Love is like many of us in early adolescence. For many of us, there may be an uncomfortable recognition of our awkward past selves, possibly even more so for female viewers. The way director Eliza Hittman and director of photography Sean Porter shoot her, Piersanti always comes at the film’s material with naturalism and understatement. The events of the film feel like they’ve happened. They have unshakable aura of not just realism, but something that occasionally borders on vivid truth (or, put another way, there is an emotional fidelity to it as much as a faithful rendering of reality). 

It Felt Like Love’s subject is adolescent sexuality and that of a young female. Films and television shy away from this subject. Western society is so deeply puritanical and the United States is so repressed that we get squeamish at the thought of this. It must be doubly hard for a person like Lila. She is fourteen years old. She is smart and, more importantly, she is weird. She is different, with a mess of dark, bushy hair and a constant external humming of young insecurity. She owns her strangeness with a quiet defiance. But she still would like some boys to notice her and pine for her. Lila’s closest friend is Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni). Chiara has already had sex and goes through a steady rotation of boyfriends. This is the one area where Chiara is wiser and better versed. 

The difference between Lila and Chiara is like the difference between Laura and Claire in Eric Rohmer’s Claire’s Knee. At one point, in that film, it is remarked about how Claire is currently more beautiful than Laura, but how it is also easy to tell that Laura’s beauty will only grow and surpass Claire’s as she becomes older. All Claire has is her looks and the fact that she is young. The same can be said for Lila and Chiara. Chiara’s beauty is fleeting, and she is taking advantage of the gifts puberty has provided her. Meanwhile, Lila is drowning in puberty and the new found interests it has given her.

Lila is navigating a minefield. She has a strong fascination with sex. She goes out of her way to try to lose her virginity. She is out of her depth. Lila has not quite discerned the larger, complicated cultural and social views of women and sex. She doesn’t understand that there is so much more to sex than the act itself. And even the act of sex itself she doesn’t entirely comprehend. All she knows is that she wants it. Her friends are doing it, and she feels like she is getting left behind. 

Lila talks to her younger neighbor with a careless bragging bravado. Much of it is word-for-word repetition of what she has heard from older, more experienced individuals. She doesn’t get what it means. She feigns. This is the one time and place where she can reign supreme. It is the only time where her confidence and self-esteem can be raised, where she doesn’t have to feel uncomfortable, confused and uncertain. In a better world, she would stop pursuing much older guys who have no interest in her. She would date the age appropriate next door neighbor. They would simply make out and it would be enough. 

But the world wants Lila to grow up, and grow up faster than she can always handle. It is easy to imagine that a few years earlier that Lila’s awkwardness and gawkiness were fine. She was just a little kid and being a little frumpy and strange was acceptable. Now, she must be constantly hyper-aware of her body and the changes taking place to it. She must be deeply self-conscious of how people are looking at her and thinking about her. She has been asked to grow up faster than is possibly fair. 

It Felt Like Love has one of the best titles of any film released in 2014. The title beautifully captures the delicate, bittersweet poignancy of the film. It wonderfully sums up Lila’s complicated feelings and her journey throughout the film. When we are young, we assume our emotions and feelings have a purity and honesty. We believe them to be real and true. Life is constantly forcing us to readjust our beliefs and to recalibrate our emotions. Lila mistakes her budding sexual feelings for something deeper and more meaningful than they actually are. 

And yet, there is a resiliency to Lila. She has an inner strength to her. Piersanti’s performance is great because it invites us into Lila’s headspace. Piersanti reveals to us an inner life through posturing and small facial adjustments. Lila is vulnerable, but she doesn’t want anyone to pick up on that. Yet there is constant anxiety fluttering underneath. Even when she is willful and impulsive, there is a sickly sense of doubt and fear that bubbles under the surface. I want to see Piersanti appear in more. This is her first featured performance and she is remarkably assured. She is so well-matched with Hittman’s vision. It Felt Like Love’s vibrancy comes from Piersanti tapping into that all too familiar adolescent apprehension and laying it bare like an exposed nerve.