It Felt Like Love

In Gina Piersanti, also making her feature debut, Hittman has found the perfect actress to portray the difficult undertaking of growing up, or at least trying to.

Hittman draws attention to the pervasive cultural forces (rap music, Internet pornography, suggestive dancing on TV) that present young girls as sexual objects, making the scenes of exploitation seem sadly inevitable.

Rarely has the zone between girlhood and womanhood been captured with such urgent honesty than in Eliza Hittman's superb teen drama "It Felt Like Love."

"It Felt Like Love" doesn't just unreel before your eyes, it weighs on you.

It's easy to be seduced by the loosely observational vibe of the movie, even as its tale of a shrinking violet struggling not to be a late bloomer fails to strike more than a single note of dismay.

Gorgeously shot in Brooklyn's beachfront neighborhoods and devoid of easy sentimentality, "It Felt Like Love" features realistic performances all around, understandable given the cast of mostly first-time actors.

It Felt Like Love is Hittman's first credited feature, and when it begins to slow, one can tell that she is perhaps still navigating the transition from short to full-length.

[Hittman's] offbeat visual style ... helps put you inside the mind of the lead character, for whom nothing is clear.

Hittman wraps her pointed agenda in a deceptively lovely tone poem about adolescence and summer, almost impressionistic in its evocation of the raging hormones of the teenage years.

It's neither overly sentimental nor obnoxiously cautionary.

First-time feature filmmaker Hittman, working with the talented DP Sean Porter, has a natural way with visuals that communicates the curiosity running rabid through the blood of summer-idle teenagers.

The scenes between Lila, Sammy, and Sammy's macho friends feature some of Hittman's most acute dialogue and direction.