German writer and director Hille Norden makes her debut with Easy Girl, a gorgeous, candy-colored, deeply personal film about trauma, friendship, and survival. Reason8 is handling international sales at American Film Market, and the film will have its international premiere in the First Feature section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF).
Written and directed by Norden, who was shortlisted for the 2022 German Screenplay Award, “Easy Girl” tells the story of Noah, a free-spirited femme fatale in her mid-20s who was the victim of sexual assault as a young girl. Ten years later, when she reunites with her childhood friend and classmate Jonah, their friendship becomes a journey of desire, pain, and healing.
Newcomer Dana Hafers (The Disappearance of Josef Mengele) stars as Noah, while Luna Jordan (Euphory) plays the unassuming medical student Jonah.
What begins as a hedonistic party with a hint of alcohol gradually turns into a painful dredging of memories as Jonah begins to see through Noah’s confident façade and reveals the scars that fuel his reckless pursuit of sex.
Norden’s palette is playful and bright, and the gorgeous, sexy dresses that Nore sews for nights out reflect both her vitality and vulnerability.
She told Variety that her goal was to show that beauty, pain and humor can coexist in a story about survival and self-definition.
“I wanted to make a movie that was fun and interesting wherever there was space, so even if the theme was sinister, it was wrapped in something nice.
“I don’t believe you can turn shit into money,” she added. “If you look at the gloom, and you paint it with glitter, it doesn’t make the gloom go away. But you add something beautiful to it, and it makes it a little easier to deal with it. This is what I did in my life. And this is what I did in my movies.”
The balance between beauty and cruelty runs throughout the film. “Beauty is next to the abyss,” Norden reflects. “And violence is very close to happiness. This is also why Nore (as a trauma survivor) keeps confusing things. She always confuses love and violence. Both are very close. It’s a survival mechanism.”
“Easy Girl” reconsiders the “Lolita” archetype from a distinctly female perspective, reshaping notions of desire, consent, and agency, and leaving no doubt that sex with girls is abuse, no matter the circumstances.
Showcasing a messy, non-linear healing process, the film moves back and forth between past and present, reality and Nore’s memories, highlighting the gray areas of trauma and recovery.
“I wanted to show that nothing happens when you talk about it. You can have a boyfriend, you can have a job, you can be a director. You can be anything. And there’s no shame in being a survivor of sexual assault,” she says. “I understand how you feel so ashamed about it, but it doesn’t really make sense. And I think the shame I used to feel was the shame of the perpetrator.”
The theme of self-acceptance is at the emotional core of the film, an internal reckoning that becomes the turning point where Nore begins to love herself and allows others to love her. “We (survivors) believe that it is very difficult for others to love us with the traces of abuse.
“The last thing you want to do is say, ‘Well, I’m fine just the way I am, because someone broke my will and I was shaped,'” she says. “But in the end, you realize that you are not shaped by what happened, but by the choices you make. And it is very difficult to forget that violence is not love. But it is possible. The wounds will heal.”
Looking to the future, Norden has two fiction projects in development. One explores how love and intimacy have evolved over the past two decades amid changing gender dynamics, and the other, born out of collaboration with the German military, aims to bridge the gap between civilian and military perspectives in Germany.
“Easy Girl,” which premiered at the Hamburg Filmfest in September under the title “Smalltown Girl,” is produced by Leitwolf Filmproduktion and Kinescope Film, with ZDF/Das Kleine Fernsehspiel serving as co-producer.
The film will have its international premiere at Tallinn’s Black Nights on November 18th.
