Jenna Ortega’s controversial film Miller’s Girl, which made its debut during the Palm Springs Film Festival, is now coming to Netflix. The film stars Ortega as student Cairo Sweet opposite Martin Freeman as Jonathan Miller, her creative writing teacher whom she starts a forbidden relationship with after a creative writing assignment that yields complex results.
The film will make its debut on the streaming platform starting April 25th, 2024.
Miller’s Girl was ripe with controversy from the moment its first trailer premiered, with fans drawing quick comparisons to the 1900s Alicia Silverstone and Cary Elwes’ movie The Crush, which also features an age-gap romance. Once the movie finally released, the main controversy of this movie centered around a sex scene between Ortega, 21, and Freeman, 51 that drew backlash over the 31-year age gap between the actors.
Comments from the film’s intimacy coordinator, Kristina Arjona, also caused SAG-AFTRA to tighten its Standards and Protocols for the use of Intimacy Coordinators, particularly regarding confidentiality.
The movie has a 29% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s fair to say a lot of the concerns carried over to the actual movie. Now, with Netflix making it widely available, the reactions on the internet are half happy that the movie will be widely available and half concerned that people “aren’t going to talk about the incredible performance from #JennaOrtega. It’s going to be about those scenes with her and story.”
One user even said, “We do not need straight men watching that”
Despite that, some people are just genuinely happy they get to watch the movie, like this fan who wonders if it’s real.
And then there’s this user, who has plans to fix the movie. Sorry Martin Freeman, that means your character is out. “A perfect movie just with Jenna’s and Winnie’s scenes”