The Brooklyn-set “It Felt Like Love” is a coming-of-age movie down to its marrow.
Writer-director Eliza Hittman captures the agony of 14-year-old Lila (Gina Piersanti) as her burgeoning sexual feelings hit her with brute force, through intense close-ups, first-person sensory effects and off-kilter, dreamlike tableaux that transform Gravesend into the front line of a haunting awakening.
The film eschews storytelling conventions for a mood-driven approach that gets to the heart of this complicated subject, specifically evoking society’s often unequal standards for male and female sexuality.
