This article contains spoilers for Miller’s Girl.
Ultimately, Mr. Miller is suspended from his job, loses his best friend, and his already tense relationship with his wife, Beatrice, falls apart. Meanwhile, the film ends with Cairo smugly calling her teacher’s downfall “her greatest achievement to date.”
Suffice to say, this storyline was deemed controversial by many, with Mr. Miller arguably being portrayed as a victim to his teen student — who he shared a passionate kiss with and fantasized over — while Cairo is vilified as the movie’s conniving temptress.
Summarizing the discourse, Screenrant pointed out that the plot reinforces “the harmful stereotype that teenage girls are largely at fault for inappropriate power-balanced relationships.”
In addition to the troubling storyline, viewers were uncomfortable with a fantasy scene that shows Cairo and Mr. Miller acting out the graphic sex and foreplay described in Cairo’s erotic story.
Jenna was around 19 years old when the movie was filmed, and Martin was 50. Some considered this age gap inappropriate for a sex scene.
In February, Kristina Arjona, the intimacy coordinator who worked on Miller’s Girl, detailed how the scene in question was shot and reassured fans that Jenna was protected throughout filming.
And now, in a new interview with The Times, Martin has defended the movie by insisting that it is “grown-up and nuanced,” adding: “It’s not saying: ‘Isn’t this great?’”
Martin’s comments have sparked a mixed reaction from fans, with one person supporting him on a Reddit forum as they wrote: “I get his point. Media literacy has disintegrated in recent years. There are a lot of people that even think that stuff that is morally wrong and even shown by the narrative to be wrong, shouldn’t be shown.”